Art matters

Time and Place of Incident artist talk on 1 Dec, Thurs, 2.30-4-30 pm

2011-11-28T23:49:00.004+08:00

http://visualpond.blogspot.com/2011/11/time-and-place-of-incident-artist-talk.html

END FRAME VIDEO ART PROJECT 3

TIME AND PLACE OF INCIDENT

solo exhibition of Kiri Dalena

ongoing at the basement of Vargas Museum until 10 December 2011

Artist talk 1 December 2011, Thursday, 2.30-4.30 pm

Please join us on 1 December 2011, Thursday, 2.30-4.30 pm, for the artist talk of TIME AND PLACE OF INCIDENT, the solo exhibition of Kiri Dalena at the Basement of Vargas Museum. The talk will include a presentation by Dalena in discussion with the curator, Clarissa Chikiamco, and Rowena Paraan, Secretary-General of the show's co-presentor, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.

TIME AND PLACE OF INCIDENT concentrates on the killings of media journalists in the Philippines, with the country being considered as one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists. Dalena’s show involves documentation footage taken by her and volunteers at the grave sites of these journalists as well as shots showing selected places of their assassination.The exhibition runs until 10 December 2011 at Vargas Museum, Roxas Avenue, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Quezon City, open Tuesday to Saturday, 9 am to 5 pm (closed 30 November). There is a short waiting period to view the show. For directions to Vargas Museum, click here: http://vargasmuseum.wordpress.com/visiting-the-museum/where-we-are/

Dalena’s exhibition is also the fourth offering of End Frame Video Art Project 3, a project of the non-profit organization Visual Pond. Throughout the Philippine video art festival, artists stage a solo show presenting new video work in various venues from 2011 to 2012. For more information, visit http://www.visualpond.org and for further inquiries, email visualpond@gmail.com or call +63.917.5357955.

The talk is sponsored by the GeiserMaclang marketing communication company with refreshments from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. The show is made possible by Visual Pond and Vargas Museum and the exhibition’s co-presenters: the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the University of the Philippines’ College of Mass Communications and Department of Art Studies, the Ateneo Art Gallery, GeiserMaclang and the individuals Carlo Gabuco and Gym Lumbera.

Invitation to End Frame 3 show: Time and Place of Incident, a solo show by Kiri Dalena

2011-11-14T17:12:00.000+08:00

End Frame Video Art Project 3, the 2011-2012 Philippine Video Art Festival,

with Vargas Museum Presents

TIME AND PLACE OF INCIDENT

a solo exhibition by Kiri Dalena

Opening on 18 November 2011, Friday, 4 pm.

Artist talk on 1 December 2011, Thursday, 2.30 pm. Exhibition runs until 10 December 2011.

Visual Pond’s End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, the 2011-2012 Philippine video art festival, together with Vargas Museum, presents Kiri Dalena’s solo exhibition, Time and Place of Incident. The show opens at the basement of Vargas Museum on 18 November 2011, Friday, at 4 pm and runs until 10 December. An artist talk will be held at 2:30 pm on 1 December, Thursday.

Time and Place of Incident concentrates on the killings of media journalists in the Philippines, with the country being considered as the world’s second most dangerous place for journalists after Iraq. Dalena’s show involves documentation footage taken by her and volunteers at the grave sites of these journalists as well as shots showing selected places of their assassination. Believing video to be a powerful medium in conveying loss and injustice, the exhibition features Dalena’s stills and videos beaming through multiple projections in the given venue of the museum.

A winner of the Ateneo Art Awards in 2009, Dalena works as an artist and documentary filmmaker. She has made a number of politically charged exhibitions and documentaries. Majority of her sculptures and installations address acts of state violence and injustice that continue to plague the Philippines despite several regime changes. She studied B.S. Human Ecology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and learned filmmaking at the Mowelfund Film Institute. She had her first solo exhibition in 2007 at Mag:net while this Vargas Museum exhibition forms her fifth.

Dalena’s Time and Place of Incident is also the fourth offering of End Frame Video Art Project 3, a project of the non-profit organization Visual Pond. Throughout the Philippine video art festival, artists stage a solo show presenting new video work in various venues from 2011 to 2012. Curated by Clarissa Chikiamco, the theme of the third edition, Present, refers to the current project’s focus on the video art practices of selected Philippine contemporary artists. Dalena’s exhibition follows the End Frame 3 shows of Tad Ermitaño, Manny Montelibano and Chitz Ramirez. End Frame 3 continues to 2012 with exhibitions of Kaloy Olavides, Maria Taniguchi and Yason Banal.

Time and Place of Incident is made possible by the exhibition’s co-presenters: the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the University of the Philippines’ College of Mass Communications and Department of Art Studies, the Geiser-Maclang marketing company, the Ateneo Art Gallery and the individuals Carlo Gabuco and Gym Lumbera.

The show will be viewable throughout its run between Tuesday-Saturday, 9 am to 5 pm, with appointments of at least 10 minutes in advance highly recommended. The appointment may be set by calling Vargas Museum with telephone number (632) 9281927 or email a day in advance to vargasmuseum@gmail.com. Those without an appointment may view the show after a short waiting period. Vargas Museum is located on Roxas Avenue at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, http://www.vargasmuseum.wordpress.org. There will also be a satellite exhibition, Requiem, at the lobby of Plaridel Hall at the UP College of Mass Communications, Ylanan Road, Diliman, Quezon City, from 17 - 29 November 2011. For inquiries on Visual Pond projects and End Frame 3, visit http://www.visualpond.org or call Rica Estrada at +63917-8170198 or email visualpond@gmail.com.

Curatorial identity

2011-10-26T18:21:00.003+08:00

Click here to read my article, "Curatorial identity", out in the Philippine Star last 10 October 2011.

End Frame 3 and Finale Art File present Wanted: Tubero, solo exhibition by Claro Ramirez

2011-09-30T03:02:00.002+08:00

END FRAME VIDEO ART PROJECT 3, the 2011-2012 Philippine Video Art Festival,

with Finale Art File presents

WANTED: TUBERO

a solo exhibition by Claro Ramirez

Opening on 6 October 2011, Thursday, 6 pm.

Artist talk on 22 October, Saturday, 4 pm. Exhibition runs until 27 October.

A prequel to Claro Ramirez’s offering for the upcoming 2011 Jakarta Biennale, Wanted: Tubero features an initially minimal installation of television monitors connected with PVC pipes. During the exhibition opening and throughout the show’s run, visitors will be invited to adjoin to the installation through available pipes which may be connected to the existing work. Wanted: Tubero, particularly within the arts, emphasizes the importance of engagement, participation and community. Ideas that are reflected as well in the monitors' content, the televisions play videos of other artists’ work as well as Ramirez’s own. The process of audience involvement in the installation will also be documented to eventually become a part of the evolving work.

Wanted: Tubero is the 10^th solo exhibition of Claro “Chitz” Ramirez, who practices both as an artist and curator. A recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award in 2000, Ramirez’s works are often site-specific installations, attached to the exhibition space, context and audience. With the latter, he gives particular value to reception, connection and interactivity. Having studied Commercial Arts in the University of Santo Tomas and Fine Arts in the University of the Philippines, Ramirez held his first solo show in 1996 and has been exhibiting his video installations since 2002. From 2005, he has also been acting as consultant for Lopez Memorial Museum in artistic direction and in multimedia exhibitions.

Ramirez’s Wanted: Tubero is the third offering of End Frame Video Art Project 3, a project of the non-profit organization Visual Pond. Throughout the Philippine video art festival, artists stage a solo show presenting new video work in various venues from 2011 to 2012. Curated by Clarissa Chikiamco, the theme of the third edition, Present, refers to the current project’s focus on the video art practices of selected Philippine contemporary artists. Ramirez’s exhibition follows the End Frame 3 shows of Tad Ermitaño and Manny Montelibano and will be followed by the exhibitions of Kiri Dalena, Yason Banal, Kaloy Olavides and Maria Taniguchi.

The show opens at the Video Room of Finale Art File on 6 October 2011, Thursday, at 6 pm. An artist talk will be held at 4 pm on 22 October, Saturday, and the exhibition runs until 27 October 2011. Finale Art File gallery hours are Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 7 pm. Finale is located at Warehouse 17, La Fuerza Compound, 2241 Don Chino Roces Avenue, Makati Metro Manila with telephone number (632) 813-2310, 812-5034. For more on Visual Pond projects and End Frame 3, visit http://www.visualpond.org or call Rica Estrada at +63917-8170198 or email visualpond@gmail.com.

End Frame 3: documentation of Manny Montelibano's exhibition Sorry for the Inconvenience

2011-09-12T00:43:00.001+08:00

Below is a photo slideshow of Manny Montelibano's End Frame 3 exhibition Sorry for the Inconvenience at Gallery Nova which ran from 13 August to 9 September 2011. End Frame Video Art Project 3 is the series of solo art exhibitions I'm curating which presents new video work in various venues from 2011-2012.

We're still working on the video documentation and will post it as soon as it's ready.

End Frame 3 and Gallery NOVA present SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE, an exhibition by Manny Montelibano

2011-08-11T09:01:00.004+08:00

inviting everyone to my next curated exhibition opening this Saturday, 13 August 2011

End Frame Video Art Project 3, together with Gallery NOVA,

Presents SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE, an exhibition by Manny Montelibano,

Opening on 13 August 2011, Saturday, 6.30 pm.

Artist Talk on 16 August, Tuesday, 6 pm. Exhibition runs until 9 September.

Visual Pond’s End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, together with Gallery NOVA, presents Manny Montelibano’s Sorry for the Inconvenience, the latest exhibition of the 2011-2012 Philippine video art festival. The solo exhibition of Montelibano opens at Gallery NOVA on 13 August 2011, Saturday, at 6:30 pm with an artist talk on 16 August, Tuesday, at 6 pm.

Examining the idea of aggravating disturbances amidst the thrust for the public good, Sorry for the Inconvenience stages an audio-visual affront on the rhetoric of the politically powerful. In a gathering, manipulation and collision of declamations, the exhibition suggests of the all-consuming nature of dominance, which comes at both the impact and expense of others.

The show forms the fourth solo exhibition of the Bacolod-based Montelibano, who has been practicing as an artist and showing at various venues in Manila and the Visayas since 2002. Montelibano received his training through his experience as technical director at University of St. La Salle in Bacolod and through a 2004 director’s apprenticeship under filmmaker Peque Gallaga. Crossing fields, Montelibano is a member of the Black Artists in Asia Association Inc. and founded Bacollywood: The Visayan Film Festival. He also cofounded the production collective Produksyon Tramontina Inc. An active member of his community, he often shows in group exhibitions in his region. His other solo shows include Greater than or Equal to Infinity (Gallery NOVA, 2010), Escabeche: Filipino Sweet and Sour (Galleria Duemila, 2009) and PO Asa (Gallery Orange, 2008).

Montelibano’s Sorry for the Inconvenience is the second offering of End Frame Video Art Project 3, following Tad Ermitaño’s exhibition last January. Curated by Clarissa Chikiamco, the theme of the third edition, Present, refers to the current project’s focus on selected Philippine contemporary artists’ practices in video art. Throughout the festival, each artist stages a show presenting new video work in various venues from 2011 to 2012. Otherartists presenting for End Frame 3 include Claro Ramirez, Kiri Dalena, Yason Banal, Kaloy Olavides and Maria Taniguchi.

Sorry for the Inconvenience runs until 9 September 2011. Gallery NOVA, located at Warehouse 12A, La Fuerza Compound 2241 Don Chino Roces Avenue, Makati Metro Manila, is open Monday to Saturday from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm. RSVP for the artist talk at tel. no. (632) 392-7797 or +63922-8006925. For inquiries on Visual Pond projects and End Frame 3, call Rica Estrada at +63917-8170198 or email visualpond@gmail.com.

Brief statement on the reaction to Mideo Cruz's work

2011-08-11T07:39:00.005+08:00

I am appalled and, at the same time, exasperated on the hysteria regarding Mideo Cruz's work Poleteismo which was exhibited at "Kulo" at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. I also condemn the closure and, in effect, censorship of the exhibition, the apparent result of the overwhelming threats against the people at CCP.

Regardless of the CCP being a state institution, the artist, like the other people in this country, has an absolute right to express himself, whether or not the majority will find this offensive. Democracy does not mean mob rule. There is a lot of rubbish as well being bandied about such as the art in CCP having to express Filipino values, Filipino identity. Pray tell, what are Filipino values? What is the Filipino identity? We are coming dangerously close to propaganda.

What kind of art would the majority like to find in CCP? Are we to put it to a vote? If we are to follow what the majority desires, we're going to wind up with a lot of terrible to substandard art in there. This is not to say that majority of Filipinos have bad taste. It is a natural occurrence in art that even works simply recognized as art are first recognized by a minority. It is why the art world uses the term avant-garde ("advance guard"/"front guard").

Mideo's work is not harming anyone (at least in the literal physical sense). He followed the guidelines of the allotted space by the guest curator, as selected by CCP. As a curator myself, I've seen a lot of works and exhibitions which I do not like but it does not give me any right at all to vandalize and/or remove it. If I don't like the work, I usually just ignore it. Sometimes I may discuss this with others but that is all.

For those who do not like Mideo's work, you can scream and beat your chest--you are well within your rights. But you should not take away that freedom from someone else.

It should be said as well that Mideo's artwork does not necessarily represent his personal views on religion. How an artist expresses his artistic identity can be very different from his personal identity. There are some artists who work autobiographically (think like van Gogh), which is the popular conception of the artist. Yet, many contemporary artists today work more like sociologists, doing interpretations and interventions from their observations on culture. Due to this nature, they are able to personally distance themselves from the work.

People are reading Mideo's work as an attack on Catholicism. I actually don't see the work that way. To me, his work is about iconography, colonialism and capitalism. But even if it were an attack on Catholicism, so what? Criticism against Catholicism - in particular Catholic fundamentalism - is fair. With the death threats that the artist has been getting, it just goes to show the great irony of certain Catholics and the Church in this country and also how object-oriented their faith is.

Video Voyage on 18 July 2011, Langgeng Art Foundation, Yogyakarta

2011-07-17T22:18:00.003+08:00

MON 18 JUL 1830 – 2030

Langgeng Art Foundation
Jalan Suryodiningratan 37, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

+Video Voyage
An informal artist’s presentation (Allison Holt, U.S.A.) , Akiq AW (MES56, Indonesia) and a screening featuring new and recent video work from The Philippines curated and introduced by Clarissa Chikiamco (Manila). Followed by Q&A session. In English.

Clarissa Chikiamco (Manila, Philippines) is currently curating projects and doing research on video art in the Philippines. She is working with several artists presenting new video work while simultaneously investigating Philippine video art histories. In a state of flux, she is going back and forth between practice and research, presence and reversals. She will be talking about her current focus on video which has provoked self-reflexive interrogations on the idea of postmedium and curatorial identity.

From 2009 to 2010, Allison Leigh Holt lived and worked in Central Java as a J. William Fulbright Fellow through the U.S. Department of State, where the focus of her independent research was traditional Javanese concepts of multidimensional reality: the tools that traditional culture has developed to navigate it and the logic that underlies it. Through her own experience and the combined lenses of cognitive science, philosophy, science fiction, and theoretical physics, she explored Javanese methods of comprehension that extend beyond the world’s temporal and spatial limits, and the ancient system within which they function. In an open dialog format, Holt will present her ongoing research-in-progress, consisting of video-sculpture and diagrams created in collaboration with members of House Of Natural Fiber, as well as video performances, and examples of video and media coalitions arising in the USA.

“On Photographic Time and Motion” by Akiq AW (MES56, Indonesia) examines the complexity of the processes that occur in photography and video works; and in what so called relevant boundaries between these mediums. The process here refers to when a reality captured by the observer (the artist) using the recorder until being presented before the audience. In particular, this work focuses on the logic of photography, in the tension between the moving and still images. In the past, to capture a movement, photographer created her/his works with a slow speed or multiple expose that produced images as if it’s moving; but in fact the movement with certain duration cannot be presented because of the medium’s limitations, which is being printed on paper. Benefiting from the invention of digital cameras and digital photo frames, the technological barriers have disappeared. Photography can now show a sequence of motion in certain duration.Another issue is the boundary between photography and video. In this work, the observer is always in a constant position / not moving (such as in photography), but the objects that were recorded show minor movements. This is photography work that is videographic, as well as a video work being photographic. All three series in “On Photographic Time and Motion” represent tradition in photography and painting: portraiture, landscape and still life.

bedroomlab 2011 July 15 edition

2011-07-14T02:14:00.003+08:00

BedroomLab functions as an informal art + tech + diybio platform, wherein open discussions, brainstorming sessions, lectures, network meetings, performances, hands-on workshops, demonstrations and public gatherings take place in people's living rooms, gardens, laboratories, and other intimate spaces.

What: BEDROOMLAB LECTURE SERIES
When: 7:00PM | July 15 Friday
Where: Clay Cafe, Makati City, Manila, Philippines, Earth, Milky Way
How: Facebook Event Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=169433956457930
For Whom: artists, engineers, scientists, filmmakers, musicians, hackers, professionals, academics, curators, cinephiles, and everyone in similar and opposing fields.

THIS FRIDAY (JULY 15 / 7:30PM) in BEDROOMLAB LECTURE SERIES, we have Samuel André, an artist trained in mathematics, physical and cognitive sciences. A specialist in modeling systems and artificial human knowledge by neuroscience, cognitive psychology, human computer interaction, computer science and philosophy of the mind. He will be talking about his work and will be performing a live improvisation set using multicast (see computer networking) with multi-layered field recordings creating an intense and emotional universe that you pass through as a waking dream; like cinema for the ear. He will also conduct a “sound walk” workshop focusing on field recording and sound ecology on JULY 16 (details at the end).

Talking about sound, Mark Laccay a specialist on “audio tape restoration and digital audio archiving for heritage preservation” will be talking about the project on archiving The Jose Maceda Tapes. One of the most influential pioneers in the field of Asian avant-garde music and ethnomusicology, “Jose Maceda is one of the the most original and under appreciated composers in contemporary music. Maceda has been creating remarkable compositions, often for large ensembles of the same instrument for fifty years.” -Tzadik

Curator Lisa Chikiamco will be giving an introduction to her ongoing 2011-2012 curatorial project, End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, a series of solo exhibitions of Philippine-based artists presenting new video work. The next End Frame 3 exhibition, featuring Manny Montelibano, opens on 13 August at Gallery Nova.

Photo-journalist Jes Aznar will discuss his documentary photography projects that deal with the issues of the Hacienda Luisita uprising and the Maguindanao conflict.

Musician-philanthropist Taylor Chase will talk about his band South of Market’s current project to aid abandoned and orphaned Filipino children through music and performance -- as well as the band’s dream of bringing high-profile rock bands to the Philippines to perform in the ultimate benefit concert.

And earlier during the evening, we’ll have a special film program at 7.30PM. In cooperation with .MOV, filmmaker Khavn de la Cruz presents “CINEMALAYO” a screening/lecture/performance centered around the extraordinary film “IDOL: Bida/Kontrabida”. A film that Jonathan L. Beller (a professor of Critical and Visual Studies at The Pratt Institute) calls “a brilliant farce.” “A film so unusual, provocative and at times shattering... that perhaps a new aesthetic category might be required here: ‘stuplime’ (a term Sianne Ngai defined as “ a syncretism of boredom and astonishment, of what "dulls" with what "irritates" or agitates, of excessive excitation with extreme desensitization or fatigue.)” A film with 5 and a half endings, and constantly riddled by the protagonist’s “falling down and getting up again, countering tragic failure with an accumulation of comic fatigues precisely characterizes the unsteady movement of the films’ protagonist Bayani Makapili, whose name in English means ‘Hero Traitor’... embodies the contradictions of the nation, has a form of heroism thrust upon him purely through circumstance, and his inadequacy to the task is so absurd that he betrays the role at every narrative turn, pointing out, as it were the farcical aspects of the conceit of the national hero, to the extent that the film itself can not move forward except as an over the top farce.” (J.L. Beller: Our Poverty Will Be Our Greatest Export” : Philippine Realism and the Poverty of Farce)

The night will conclude with musical performances from Thailand’s Neuter Lover, our very own Turbo Goth, Kate Torralba, with live drawing projections by Dex Fernandez plus more surprises!

FREE ADMISSION -- DONATIONS ACCEPTED

Lecturers:

SAMUEL ANDRE, a French sound artist
A sound artist & video artist trained in Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Cognitive sciences, his research on musical interfaces led him to develop a sound project under the name of ieva which composed a music similar to imaginary journeys or aural short stories. For the past 2 years ago he started to practice improvisation multicast using multi layered field recordings that create an intense and emotionally universe that you pass through as a waking dream, like a cinema for the ear. He also directed several experimental films: abstraction and sensitivity, playing on the body of the digital image (pixelization, compression... He developed his approach in films more figuratively combining diary and man's relationship to nature.
He has worked with various artists in collaborative improvisation: dancers, composers, videographers and instrumentalists.
http://www.ieva-li.net/

KHAVN DE LA CRUZ, a filmmaker and musician
Khavn Dela Cruz (born 1973) is a Filipino poet, musician, and experimental filmmaker known for his no-budget films. He is considered as the father of Philippine digital filmmaking and has made more than twenty features and seventy short films that received acclaim internationally. He is the president of independent film company Filmless Films and the executive director of .MOV International Digital Film Festival.
http://khavndelacruz.org/

LISA CHIKIAMCO, a curator
Clarissa Chikiamco is a Manila-based independent art curator and writer. A magna cum laude graduate from Ateneo de Manila University, she took her master’s degree in Art Curatorship at the University of Melbourne through the merit-based Australian Endeavour Award. She received The Philippine Star’s Lifestyle Journalism Awards in arts and culture, was part of the Emerging Writers Program of Melbourne’s Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces and was recently the researcher in residence at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.
http://writelisawrite.blogspot.com
http://www.visualpond.org

MARK LACCAY, audio archivist
Mark Laccay is an award winning audio engineer who is the CEO of Sonic Logo Multimedia Inc. and a former managing partner of Sweetspot Studios. He has worked as a sound designer for various films and is currently the main audio consultant for the "Dr. Jose Maceda Collection Digitization" Project. He has worked as an educator -- teaching audio production classes at DLSU-CSB. He recently returned from the Austrian Academy of Sciences where he acquired a certificate of Audio Tape Restoration and Digital Audio Archiving.

JES AZNAR, a photo-journalist
Jes Aznar is a documentary photographer whose works have tackled humanitarian issues such as land reform, poverty, civil conflicts, and disasters, and topics such as the Hacienda Luisita uprising, human conditions in urban dwellings, the war against diseases in Cambodia, humanitarian issues and the war in Mindanao, and the human trafficking issue in the Philippines and other parts of the world -- which recently won him the National Media Award for his photo essay on the lives of trafficked Filipinas in Sabah, Malaysia. His works has been published on the pages of The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, Stern, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Asia Geo magazine, among others.
http://folio.jesaznar.com/

TAYLOR CHASE, a musician and philanthropist
Taylor Herbert Chase is a musician and producer who is part of South of Market (SOMA), an alternative rock band originating from San Francisco, but composed of Filipino-Americans. The band is currently in the country to raise attention to the plight of the street children in the Philippines -- through music. This year, SOMA is launching its flagship project called THE MISSION POSSIBLE, a series of gigs for a cause benefiting Childsville, a child caring institution structured to educate orphans and offer them the hope of a better future. SOMA is also working on its future project -- a local benefit concert that will feature Grammy-awarded acts from the U.S.
http://childsville.com/

Performances:

NEUTER LOVER, a musician from Thailand
Neuter Lover is the name of a young female musician from Thailand who plays a blend of trip hop and guitar rock using a computer and an electric guitar. She released an EP of original music entitled 'I am Neuter Lover' in April 27, 2010, and this year, she launched her first music video ("Cry") on youtube. Her song, "Ha (Find)," which was nominated for AVIMA 2010 (Asia Pacific VOICE Independent Music Awards), won the 3rd prize as a "moody melancholic masterpiece."
http://www.neuterlover.com/

KATE TORRALBA, a fashion designer and musician
Kate Torralba is a multi-talented designer, musician, concert producer, and occasional painter. Trained as a classical pianist, Kate gravitated to playing alternative and punk music in her teens, drawing inspiration from artists such as Kate Bush, Tori Amos, and Morrissey. She is currently producing and performing original songs written for an upcoming first album.
http://blogs.stylebible.ph/katetorralba/

TURBO GOTH, musicians
Turbo Goth is a two-piece electronic rock band composed of Paolo Peralta (on guitars, drum beats, and electronic sampler) and tattoo artist/illustrator Sarah Gaugler (on lead vocals). They play semi-experimental electronic music with distorted bass synths backed by aggressive heavy beats, and punk-jazz noise guitars, stitched together by light icy vocals. Turbo Goth launched their debut album "Destroy Us All" in January of 2011, alongside their first single -- "Venus Flytrap."
http://turbogoth.com

Dex Fernandez, visual artist
http://dexfernandez.blogspot.com/

Special thanks to:

Go Go Carabao + ICX Parties
R.A.M.P. Artist Circle
and Splintr.com

ADDITIONAL INFO! WORKSHOP BY SAMUEL ANDRE! OPEN CALL!

“LISTEN” Soundwalk and Audio Workshop by Samuel André OPEN CALL:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1bOvUzYtwXeJzkCBhFX58arZuuzzoxztrd_f2m8C0_XM

Update

2011-07-14T01:13:00.005+08:00

For the past several weeks since coming home in early May from the Asia Young Artist Festival, I've been spending a lot of time reflecting on my projects and my curatorial direction. Looking at it in the long-term, I still have great flexibility and definitely there is quite a range of things I want to look at and explore. The advantages of being a young and independent include that greater flexibility to be experimental (of course, it depends how you define experimental as well) vs. the expectation in being older to have already narrowed to a field of specialization. If some artists are known for focusing on certain themes in their work, some curators are known for that as well. Although just like some artists and maybe even more so, curators can be site or situation-specific, thinking of exhibitions or projects based on the opportunity or commission or a certain context that they wish to respond to.

Actually, much of these thoughts have led me to do a lot of self-contemplating on curatorial identity (vs. artistic identity). And this probably got thrown into greater relief when I joined a performance art workshop by Mella Jaarsma in Manila Contemporary the other month. I was a non-artist among artists... but thrilled though to respond and think of my own hypothetical artworks (since for the workshop I was hypothetically an artist like them). As a curator and writer, I found it interesting, inspiring and especially insightful.

Related to that, I think around this time of the year is the time I need to start making decisions for projects next year - at least for those which need exhibition space in a gallery or a museum. I understand slots are filling up fast so I need to act quickly and get some proposals in too.

In other news, I have been devoting a lot of my time in the past month and a half to Japanese language classes. I have no plans to move to Japan but took the lessons because I simply wanted to continue from having learned Japanese during my 6-week trip there earlier this year. In some strange way, I felt some kind of ease with learning and speaking it and thought it was worth furthering it rather than letting it go. But because of the schedule, the minimum number of students required and the timing, I wound up being in a very intensive class. The hours in and outside of class spent studying, doing homework and writing clocks in to a minimum of 10 hours a week. On average I'd say it's more like 12. We also have midterms and finals which we need to pass to get to the next level. So it's been incredibly intense but also incredibly rewarding. My teacher who reads the journals she has us keep says I write well. But of course, to put it in context, I still have an elementary vocabulary and what I'm writing in my diary are things I did during the day and plans I have for the next week or next month. It's really limited but hey, I do try with what I know!

___________________

Tomorrow at the latest edition of Bedroomlab on Friday, 15 July, I will be presenting briefly on the End Frame 3 project. The event starts at 7 pm in Cafe Clay in Makati. This notice comes a bit late but do come if you can. The next End Frame 3 show, Sorry for the Inconvenience, a solo exhibition of Manny Montelibano, opens on 13 August, Saturday, 7 pm, at Gallery Nova.

For more information on Bedroomlab, go to http://bdrmlab.blogspot.com/.

On Monday evening at 6.30 pm, I will be at the Langgeng Art Foundation, Yogyakarta, Indonesia to present some videos and a short talk on Philippine video art. This is under the Video Voyage program of Video Vortex. For more details, click http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/7-yogyakarta-2/workshops.

Asian Culture Co. at Kunsthalle Gwangju

2011-04-22T23:58:00.000+08:00

Asian Culture Co.

23 April – 8 May 2011

Kunsthalle Gwangju

Guest curators: Clarissa Chikiamco (Philippines) and Pichaya Piyassapan (Thailand)

Opening reception and performance: 23 April 2011, Saturday, 7.30 pm.

http://www.kunsthalle-gwangju.com/en/now-and-upcoming/asian-culture-co

The exhibition and performance Asian Culture Co. is the product of a swift collaborative laboratory conducted as part of the first ASIA YOUNG ARTISTS FESTIVAL in Gwangju, South Korea, where alternative art space MITE/Ugro selected and brought together local artists together with various artists and curators from Asia.

The exhibition takes Daein Market as its focal point, a traditional Korean public market where MITE/Ugro as well as numerous artist studios resides. The infiltration of art in Daein Market began in 2008, during the 7^th Gwangju Biennale as part of the Bokdukbang Project, in which artists responded to the site and installed artworks and held events and workshops. Since then, Daein Market has flourished into a critical art hub, encompassing alternative spaces, artist studios and even spurning the market’s own Artist Association. Prior to art’s influx in the market, it had been declining in popularity in its 50-year history.

The presence of art often brings about eventual gentrification, raising as well the question of a sustainable coexistence between the market vendors and the growing artist population. The popularity of art market projects around the world certainly makes Daein Market an interesting site to specifically respond to, in its unusual medley of fresh and live produce, household items, clothing shops, restaurants as well as historical background, having played an important role in the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and once a bustling mecca by the city’s former train stop and bus terminal. For many of the local artists, however, the primary relevance of Daein market is in its provisions of space in which they can continue their individual practice and in which they can easily connect with other artists. As an assembly of old-time traditional residents and creative new inhabitants, the market becomes host to these parallel realities which attempt to convene in their occupation of shared space.

At the same time, the Daein Market has become an international portal of transient agents, through the initiation of residencies, exhibitions and events. The Asia Young Artist Festival, with its mix of various artists of different countries, is emblematic of this. The festival as well as Daein Market—where the festival’s participants live and discuss their profession and project—can be seen as a microcosm of Gwangju’s cultural ambitions, as the “Hub City of Asian Culture” which is colored by the imminent rise of the Asian Culture Complex in 2014.

It is in this light that the curators have decided to call the exhibition, Asian Culture Co. While ‘Co’ may seem more reminiscent of the major commercial professional organizations that are the traditional market’s competitor, the curators see ‘Co’ for its more classical meaning, such as ‘one that is associated in an action with another’.[1] The words beginning with ‘co’ – particularly the words communication, coordination, community – emphasize this and are especially denotative of the festival as well as Daein Market in its evolution and survival.

The show features video interviews of selected vendors and artists in the market, serving to reflect the market’s current community and contextualizing and providing comprehension on the situation of the site from past to present. An installation in the Kunsthalle by Kim kang seok, one of the market’s resident artists, serves to underscore the importance of giving and exchange, originating from something deeply genuine and personal but with an optimism for the local commune.

The exhibition also introduces the divergent practices of the local and international artists, who were selected by MITE/Ugro to present a performance at the Kunsthalle, which include Soichiro Mitsuya (Japan), Yangjah (Japan/Korea), Yao Chung Han (Taiwan), Mahima Singh (Nepal), Black Jaguarand Lee Jo Hum (Korea). Documentation of their past works situates the event to be staged by this improvised community of artists. During the brief period of 1-3 weeks together, the challenge is for these artists, most meeting each other for the first time, to come up with something collaborative or connected to each other to be shown at the Kunsthalle during the evening of the exhibition opening.

The evening of the opening will also feature another special performance, artists Royce Ng and Daisy Bisenieks (Australia) presenting Sing the Fruits of Our Labour. This involves them pushing a karaoke cart which was built and inspired by actual musical carts in Daein Market. Ng and Bisenieks will invite people to sing to 70’s-80’s popular Korean music and will also be distributing to the audience food with a color-coded map of the market. The English and Korean versions of the map, which they meticulously charted during their stay in MITE/Ugro and are also making available online, provides an opportunity for Koreans and foreigners to easily navigate themselves around the site, whether visiting for the fresh produce, the art in production or both. The giving of the food, which is obtained from the market, emulates the act of giving by the vendors in the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, an important historical aspect of the market and the city’s history, as they protected and fed the student protestors.

As the 7^th Gwangju Biennale curator Okwui Enwezor said of the market project in 2008, it “has taken the logic of the city of Gwangju.”[2] Three years later, Daein Market still alludes significantly to the city, its aspirations and its stable, transient and developing character.

As a parallel exhibition to the Kunsthalle, documentation of the Asia Young Artist Festival event, including the performance in the Kunsthalle, will be exhibited in Lotte Gallery, Gwangju, from 29 April to 6 May 2011. There will be an opening reception of the exhibition on 29 April, Friday, at 6 pm.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/co

[2] Quoted in Jean Oh, ‘Gwangju Biennale Fuses Art and Spectacle’, Korea, Vol. 4, No. 10, October 2008, p. 60.

Asia Young Artist Festival

2011-04-04T05:50:00.002+08:00

Inviting you all to the first Asia Young Artist Festival this April 2011, organized by Artspace MITE-Ugro headed by Seungki Cho.

ASIA YOUNG ARTIST FESTIVAL 2011.4.9~5.6

-뮤지엄스테이(4월9일.국립광주박물관)

-천막스쿨(4월12일.대인시장 옥상캠프.오후 3시) Clarissa Chikiamco, Pichaya Piyasapan,Kim seon young
-대인시장 7괴展(아트스페이스미테,4월 12일6시오픈) 고재근,마문호,신양호,이기성,김성우,윤남웅,박문종
-예술무당 프로젝트(4월.광주 일원) 마C씨
-'Sing the fruits of our labour' (4월1일-30일) Royce NG, Daisy Bisenieks
-공동창작공연 Routinely invited (4월21일 대인시장,4월23일 쿤스트할레 광주)흑표범,이조흠,김강석,Yao chung han, Yangjah Shin, Soichiro Mitsuya, Mahima Singh
-도큐멘트 AYAF展(4월29일-5월6일) 김영태,김명우,Royce Ng, Daisy Bisenieks

주최/주관 mite-ugro
후원 한국문화예술위원회
협력 국립광주박물관, 쿤스트할레광주,롯데갤러리, 전남대학교 미술학부, 조선대학교 미술학부, 영무건설, 전라도닷컴

-Museum Stay (9.Apr, National Museum of Gwangju)

-Tent School (12.Apr, Rooftop Camp, Daein Market)
Clarissa Chikiamco, Pichaya Piyasapan, Kim seon young

-Daein Market 7monsters Show (Artspace Mite, 12.apr.)

-Shaman Artist Project (Ma C)

-'Sing the fruits of our labour' (1.apr-30.apr) Royce NG, Daisy Bisenieks

-Joint Creation Performance 'Routinely Invited' (21.apr: Daein Market 23.apr: Kunsthalle Gwangju)

Black Jaguar, Lee johum,Kim kangseok, Yao chunghan,Yangjah Shin, Soichiro Mitsuya, Mahima Singh

-Document Archive Exhibition'AYAF' (29.apr-6.may : Kim youngtae, Kim Myoungwoo, Royce Ng, Daisy Bisenieks

Condemning the incident of child abuse on "Willing Willie"

2011-03-30T01:21:00.003+08:00

Normally I reserve my posts for updates on art matters.

However, as a member of the Philippine media, I feel it is important to state my thorough condemnation of the incident on the Willing Willie TV show earlier this month on channel TV-5. In the March 12 episode, 6-year old little boy Jan-Jan cries as he gyrates and does a sexy macho dance to the raucous delight of the audience and notably the show's host Willie Revillame. Jan-Jan is obviously visibly upset while performing but, from a family of very limited means, he does this for the promise of cash (those who hope to appear on this show and who watch it are usually from the lower income demographic). TV host Revillame noted himself in between his bouts of laughter, "Ganyan ho ang hirap ng buhay ng tao. Jan-Jan... sasayaw bilang macho dancer sa edad niyang 'yan para sa kanyang mahal na pamilya. Pinahanga mo ako, Jan-Jan." ("That's how hard life is. Young as he is, Jan-Jan will dance like a macho dancer for his beloved family. You've impressed me, Jan-Jan.") Revillame sees and points to Jan-Jan's distress while continuing to laugh and encouraging Jan-Jan to do the dance again. He gives Jan-Jan Php 10,000 (a little over $200) as reward (or payment or compensation, depending on your perspective).

As someone in the arts, I am used to shock tactics but this video has truly appalled and horrified me. It is also appalling that his parents see nothing wrong with this, as they said on a visit to the show the other day defending themselves and even calling Jan-Jan "talented." They had Jan-Jan perform again on the show as well his sister who seems to be 2-3 years old (in a dance with music which was not appropriate either). Revillame, on the other hand, seemed proud of the number of hits the video is garnering on youtube. His own apology smacked of insincerity as he said "there are more important issues which people should be concerning themselves with" and that "what's important is that we were able to see that this family was made happy."

This incident truly pains me, particularly thinking that the paradigm of the parents - that there is nothing wrong here - could be widespread in this vastly poverty-afflicted nation.

I have more thoughts to share but will keep it here for now to update on this post later.

ArtSpeak: Doko kara kimashita ka?

2011-03-25T15:40:00.004+08:00

The Ateneo Art Gallery warmly invites you to an ArtSpeak session:

Doko kara kimashita ka? (Where are you from?)

A talk by Clarissa Chikiamco on her experience in Japan

2.00 pm, 30 March 2011, Wednesday

Ateneo Art Gallery

2nd Level Rizal Library Special Collections Building

Ateneo de Manila University

Loyola Heights, Quezon City

Manila, Philippines

Independent curator Clarissa Chikiamco spent 6 weeks in Japan, from 7 February – 20 March 2011, as the researcher in residence at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. In this informal talk, Chikiamco will share about her experience—from research on video art in the FAAM collection to learning Japanese language and culture in her first ever visit to the country. The question, “Doko kara kimashita ka?” (“Where are you from?” or "Where do you come from?"), serves as a parallel to her experience—from the question she was often asked and the question she herself was asking in her research.

After this casual sharing, green tea and Japanese snacks will be served.

For inquiries, call the Ateneo Art Gallery at (632) 426.6488.

talk in Fukuoka on 12 March 2011, 2:00-3:30 pm

2011-03-05T22:21:00.003+08:00

Konnichiwa!

I will be giving a talk at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum on 12 March 2011, Saturday, 2-3:30 pm, on video art in the Philippines. I will be mainly talking about End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, the series of solo exhibitions of Philippine contemporary artists presenting new video work from 2011-2012.

Please click here to read about my talk. (only in Japanese)

Hope to see you there! I also hope to meet more Japanese artists during and after the talk.

documentation of PASSAGE, first solo exhibition of Tad Ermitano, presented by End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present

2011-02-13T11:51:00.005+08:00

I would like to share with everyone documentation (photo documentation above, video documentation below) of the first exhibition under End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, a series of solo exhibitions of artists presenting new video work from 2011 to 2012 which I'm curating and organizing for Visual Pond.

The exhibition, PASSAGE, is the first solo exhibition of Tad Ermitano, an artist who joined both End Frame 2006 and End Frame II in 2007 when it was still in its open-call selection-committee format. The reformatted End Frame now brings the project to a single curatorial vision, which I had discussed and posted about last month.

I will edit this post to discuss more on Passage later. Click play below to view the video documentation.

Book launch! The Life & Art of Lee Aguinaldo

2011-02-04T01:29:00.007+08:00

We just launched The Life & Art of Lee Aguinaldo this evening!

Putting a picture here of my cocurator/coauthor Boots Herrera and I near the end of the evening - posing with our book and emulating Lee's self-portrait (which emulates Albert Einstein's iconic photograph). All these variations - how fitting! Lee would love this photo as much as Boots and I do.

Last 2 days now to catch the Ateneo Art Gallery 50th anniversary exhibition, Lee Aguinaldo: In Retrospect.

Time Ruptures & Lee Aguinaldo

2011-01-31T04:13:00.010+08:00

Please click here to read my article out in Philippine Star today: Time Ruptures & Lee Aguinaldo. I actually wrote another article, Lee Aguinaldo: Artist of Appropriation, that I was going to replace with this current article but I suppose my instructions about this weren't caught "in time", so to speak! (Forgive my puns on this Monday)

A few pictures of the Lee Aguinaldo works mentioned in my article... Above - The Freeze Freak, 1979, pencil, ink and acrylic, Private Collection. Left: Illuminated Interior, 1979, pencil and ink on photograph, Cultural Center of the Philippines Collection. Right: Erased Pieter de Hooch About 1978, 1978, reproduction with pencil drawing and erasures, Private Collection. Below:
Untitled (Face & figure studies), 1951, pen and ink on paper, 35 x 27.8 cm. Private Collection.

In other announcements, Tad Ermitano's first solo exhibition, Passage, the first of a series of solo exhibitions of artists presenting new video work as part of End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, the festival I'm curating, has an extended run. You can still catch it at Pablo Gallery, C-11 South of Market Condominium, 11th Avenue, Fort Bonifacio, until 5 February, Saturday. Gallery hours are Tues - Sat, 12 - 7 pm. Thanks to everyone who came to Tad's talk last Saturday!

2011-01-29T03:56:00.003+08:00

See you at Tad's talk later today and the closing of his show at Pablo Gallery, Fort Bonifacio! Later in the week, see you also at the book launch of The Life and Art of Lee Aguinaldo, published by Vibal Foundation in partnership with the Ateneo Art Gallery, on 3 February 2011, Thursday, 6 pm at Leong Hall, Ateneo de Manila University with a reception to follow at the Ateneo Art Gallery.

Vibal Foundation and Ateneo Art Gallery launch

“The Life and Art of Lee Aguinaldo” on February 3

For its 50^th anniversary, the Ateneo Art Gallery is currently holding a retrospective exhibition of the works of Lee Aguinaldo, pioneer Philippine abstractionist, pop and conceptualist artist. The exhibit entitled “Lee Aguinaldo: In Retrospect” was opened to the public last October 26, 2010 and is on view until February 5, 2011.

On February 3, two days before the end of the retrospective, The Life and Art of Lee Aguinaldo, a long-overdue and much anticipated book, will be launched by Vibal Foundation, in partnership with the Ateneo Art Gallery.

The exhibit and the book are revealing excursions into the man and his art, the literary medium delving intimately into the art inside the man.

The book goes beyond the modernist breakthroughs that Lee bravely ushered into Philippine art even as it sheds light on the quintessential artist who lived and died for his art and personal convictions.

Leopoldo “Lee” Aguinaldo was born in 1933 in New York to a wealthy Filipino father whose family’s dry goods business was among the top fifty corporations in the Philippines, and to a Russian–American mother. He studied high school under the rigid discipline of Culver Military Academy in Indiana. Upon his return to Manila, his father forced him to take up a degree in commerce. This was obviously meant to prepare him for the managerial task he was expected to perform in the family business.

It was the 1950s, the tall and dashing mestizo, who had been a passionate self–taught artist since he was a young boy, assumed the split roles of a corporate man by day and an artist by night. He gained notoriety for taking patrons of his early paintings for night cruises aboard his yacht, and also for his penchant for parties, expensive cars, and all the decadent pleasures that a young man from Manila’s elite could enjoy.

It was also during this time when he developed close friendships with Fernando Zobel, Roberto Chabet, Pandy Aviado, and other prominent personalities in Philippine art.

He resigned from the family business to pursue a life solely dedicated to art, much to his father’s chagrin. He continued his solo exhibitions and joining group shows while raising a family.

The renegade’s early works were heavily influenced by the spontaneous action paintings of Jackson Pollock. His style later evolved during his Linear period, when the impulsive renderings of his previous creations gave way to meticulously minimalist and geometric abstractions, without losing his preference for bold colors.

The consummate artist prodigiously created artworks until he underwent a major heart operation in 1994 which incapacitated him. In spite of Lee Aguinaldo’s long-established name in the art world and the high prices patrons paid for his works, the last four decades of his bohemian life were marked by a series of news-making evictions he challenged until his death.

Lee Aguinaldo died in 2007 at the age of 73 amidst relatively modest circumstances in a small house in Quezon City — far removed from the affluent and reckless youth who was heir apparent to the business empire and properties of one of the country’s wealthiest families.

The indelible legacy of the trailblazing Filipino artist is laid out for future generations in the book The Life and Art of Lee Aguinaldo which will be launched on February 3, 2010, 6:00 PM at the Ateneo Art Gallery. The book is the fourth in Vibal Foundation’s Arte Filipino series on masters of Philippine art and will be available at the retail price of P2,900 in bookstores. The Ateneo Art Gallery is located on the second floor of the Rizal Library Special Collections Building, Ateneo de Manila University, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Call (632) 426-6488 for details.

End Frame Video Art Project 3 Launches with Passage, the first solo exhibition of Tad Ermitaño

2011-01-13T01:35:00.002+08:00

END FRAME VIDEO ART PROJECT 3: PRESENT

Launches with PASSAGE, the first solo exhibition of Tad Ermitaño

15-29 January 2011, Pablo Gallery Fort Bonifacio

End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, a Philippine video art festival, commences this month as the third edition and new format of the video art festival which took place in 2006 and 2007. Presented by Visual Pond, the theme Present refers to the current project’s focus on selected Philippine contemporary artists’ practices in video art. Throughout the festival, each artist stages a show presenting new video work in various venues from January 2011 to January 2012.

The festival proudly launches with Passage, a solo exhibition by Tad Ermitaño, opening on January 15 at Pablo Gallery, Fort Bonifacio. A site-specific work responsive to the two rooms of Pablo and the stairs between them, Passage utilizes multiple projections and video mapping technology in a crossover of fairy tales and science fiction. Ermitaño, who has studied philosophy, biology and filmmaking, has participated in several local and international group exhibitions and film festivals, including the 2002 videoart.mov, the 2004 Hong Kong International Film Festival, the 2006 Ogaki Biennale, the 2007 Dime a Dozen at Lopez Museum, the 2008 Inter-society of Electronic Arts juried exhibition and recently, the Hear to Ear exhibition of Fete dela Wsk. Passage marks the first solo exhibition of this media artist, running until 29 January 2011 with a closing talk by the artist at 5:30 pm.

Pablo Gallery, located at C-11 South of Market Condominium, 11th corner 26th Avenue, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig, is open Tuesday to Saturday from 12 noon to 7:00 pm, tel. no. (632) 506-0602. Other confirmed artists presenting new works for End Frame 3 include Manny Montelibano, Claro Ramirez, Kiri Dalena and Kaloy Olavides with the full schedule and line-up to be announced soon. For inquiries on the project, call +63917-5357955 or email visualpond@gmail.com. End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present is curated by Clarissa Chikiamco; Passage is with thanks to Green Papaya Art Projects.

Reflections: End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present

2011-01-11T22:49:00.006+08:00

I am curating the third edition of the Philippine video art festival my friends -Rica Estrada, Tenten Mina - and I initiated and did in 2006 and 2007 as a project for our sometimes active non-profit organization Visual Pond. After a hiatus of how many years, the third edition is a new format for End Frame Video Art Project. I chose to abolish the call for entries because, while it was a good opportunity to learn of others who do video and was more democratic (even if entries passed through a selection committee), the resulting exhibition was a mixed bag. In a criticism of our own project, I felt it lacked making a statement, cluttered with so many things. In retrospect, regardless of quality, each work suffered from a "mish mash" context. It was good for these works to be seen and to be able to seen in so many different reiterations by people of different backgrounds (artists, filmmakers, students). However, whatever strong point each work could make was lost or weakened by being amongst other works saying different things.

When I returned from Australia in late 2009, Rica urged us to do a third edition, saying so many people asked about End Frame while I was away. I was hesitant but considered the possibility based on conditions of changing the format. At first, I wanted to do a small group exhibition based on a particular theme. I was not one who believed that an event needs to be bigger each time next time around (and that bigger means better). Yet, while I was doing research on ideas for the show, I realized that I needed to do so much more research on artists and their video works here. I felt a little strange about subjugating artists and their works under a theme for a group show when I still had more to learn. Perhaps for the future but for now, I had more to learn.

So I thought about devising a format which would allow each artist to speak in his/her own context. The festival then would be a series of solo exhibitions of artists who've worked with video and would present a new video work. Working with each artist would also provide the necessary avenues for research (or, at the very least, identification of these avenues). But of course, there are still questions - which artists? How many? There was also the issue of the manageability and duration of the project.

Since the full line-up has yet to be announced and I'm still in the planning phase, I will write more on this next time. I can say though for now that I have decided to keep a private journal documenting my thoughts on this project as it is staged to 2012. And it is being launched this Saturday, 15 January, 7 pm with Tad Ermitaño's first solo exhibition at Pablo Gallery in Fort Bonifacio. Tad uses projections to make a site-specific work responsive to Pablo's two rooms and the stairway in between them.

I have gone back to some conversations I had with Tad in 2009 when I was writing a paper on him for my media art/cinema class (which I eventually revised to present at the Second Philippine Art Studies conference in February 2010). I plan to edit these conversations and put it in the End Frame 3 catalogue which will be released at the end of the project, to be available in online platforms like Kindle or the ipad.

My research continues as I leave next month for my residency at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, researching on their video art collection. I also have a project in Korea after that but I will be back still in time for our humid Manila summers. I will though continue to update throughout.

Press release on End Frame 3 and Tad's show below:

End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, a Philippine video art festival, commences this month as the third edition and new format of the video art festival which took place in 2006 and 2007. Presented by Visual Pond, the theme Present refers to the current project’s focus on selected Philippine contemporary artists’ practices in video art. Throughout the festival, each artist stages a show presenting new video work in various venues from January 2011 to January 2012.

The festival proudly launches with Passage, a solo exhibition by Tad Ermitaño, opening on January 15 at Pablo Gallery, Fort Bonifacio. A site-specific work responsive to the two rooms of Pablo and the stairs between them, Passage utilizes multiple projections and video mapping technology in a crossover of fairy tales and science fiction. Ermitaño, who has studied philosophy, biology and filmmaking, has participated in several local and international group exhibitions and film festivals, including the 2002 videoart.mov, the 2004 Hong Kong International Film Festival, the 2006 Ogaki Biennale, the 2007 Dime a Dozen at Lopez Museum, the 2008 Inter-society of Electronic Arts juried exhibition and recently, the Hear to Ear exhibition of Fete dela Wsk. Passage marks the first solo exhibition of this media artist, running until 29 January 2011 with a closing talk by the artist at 5:30 pm.

Pablo Gallery, located at C-11 South of Market Condominium, 11th corner 26th Avenue, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig, is open Tuesday to Saturday from 12 noon to 7:00 pm, tel. no. (632) 506-0602. Other confirmed artists presenting new works for End Frame 3 include Manny Montelibano, Claro Ramirez, Kiri Dalena and Kaloy Olavides with the full schedule and line-up to be announced soon. For inquiries on the project, call +63917-5357955 or email visualpond@gmail.com. End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present is curated by Clarissa Chikiamco; Passage is with thanks to Green Papaya Art Projects.

Update

2010-12-19T00:25:00.005+08:00

So I've been extremely busy and there are a number of my art writings which I haven't been able to post here.

The past few weeks I had been focusing on the expansion of my essay for the Lee Aguinaldo book being published by Vibal Foundation and the Ateneo Art Gallery. I think writing for a book really means seclusion! You really need time to concentrate and process your thoughts. I blogged about my essay in September when I was working on finishing it. I actually did finish it by the end of that month. My final word count was over 9,000, much more than the projected 5,000.

In early November though we had another meeting and the publisher thought it would be a good idea for us writers to expand our texts as we could include more images. The requested expansion though was 8,000 each - nearly double what I had already written! I think I was a little shocked at first with a race of conflicting feelings. I had been quite happy having already opened the retrospective and getting to attend to the many things which I needed or wanted to do but had put off because of Lee. Now I would have to put off everything again and face the extreme difficulty - mentally, emotionally and even physically - that comes in writing a long academic essay. So to know I would go back into this cave and self-imposed hibernation was nerve-wracking.

Even if I had this anxious little ball bouncing around in my stomach, there was also a part of me that was looking forward to the challenge, knowing that there are still so many things that could be said about Lee. Indeed, there was still a lot more I could discuss with Lee as a postmodernist artist, particularly with his ideas on appropriation and on, as I also felt, 'time'. I had to agree when the publisher said that my essay in my current state was solid but it also made one curious and asked for more. So now, I had the opportunity to flesh out more of its ideas - in a full additional 8,000-word glory.

In the middle of this attack on the expansion, I attended the Visayas Biennale or the VIVA Ex-con in Cebu (my first visit to this city often compared to Manila). I had already booked my trip weeks before, thinking I would have been done with my major Lee commitments by then. I also had to honor my other writing commitments, the major one being the catalogue text for the Ronald Ventura 'Converging Nature' solo exhibition at Drawing Room. And, of course, before writing meant research, research, research. I was crazy enough to actually flip page by page through several years of weekly magazines of different publications from the late 1950s to mid 1960s. Since the articles for these magazines are not entered in a computerized database, an article discussing Lee could be hidden somewhere within those pages. Since I didn't have time to check out every year of every magazine, I began by doing a random selection (example, 1963 issues of Philippines Herald Magazine) and just going through that. I would input into my computer which issues/dates I would check so I wouldn't get confused and wind up redoing what I had already done. It's an extremely time-consuming process but I did find some things I could use. I would have kept on looking but tick tock, I had to stop.

Other research meant reading books and essays, looking for those that could be of use and help me understand and discuss Lee's work. There was the usual (1) reading something for hours and realizing I can't use it; (2) reading something for hours and realizing I can't use it but it points me towards other sources I might be able to use; (3) realizing some sources might be crucial... but not available anywhere in the Philippines and too late or too expensive to order and have it shipped rush via Amazon when I'm still not 100% sure I can use it; (4) wanting sources in university libraries but I'm not a student so I don't have any borrowing privileges... so song-and-dance having very kind friends with access borrow it for me! Then, of course, making notes, pulling out quotations, even making outlines... Oh yeah, writing.

So yes, anyway, I've finished. In total, I was supposed to pass 17,500 words. What I sent in was about 19,600 - minus a few hundred since a number of those words were text call outs for which images I wanted in my essay. So 19,000++. I sent in 10,000 more words, phew. As the word count was climbing towards that, I was already quite dizzy trying to read my whole essay in one go! I was also a bit shocked when I counted the sources in my bibliography at the time I passed it- 65!

Now that I've finished it though, I'm extremely happy about the expansion so my essay could be more thorough in the discussion. I also feel like I have gained a crucial understanding to Lee's works that I hadn't had before, even as obsessed as I am with his art. This is especially with his ideas on time, which I had then only had hints of that it was worth taking note of. In retrospect, I realize now that a discussion on time is absolutely fundamental, at least to my essay.

So I've been busy with that and will continue to be busy with that, at least in terms of helping the book come together. I still need to see the copy-edited version and I've also had minor changes and additions I want to do, after thinking about it over a few days. I also want to help with the vision and visuals of the book, in somehow making it 'Lee' (as in very modern and contemporary). In other aspects, I'm still rushing to make a couple of deadlines this week and I'm also making plans for Visual Pond's End Frame 3 (will make an announcement in a couple of weeks).

I will try to do further updates on the blog this week but likely not... so if I don't get to, I wish you a wonderful holidays! Till the next update.

Modernist/Postmodernist Lee: Talk on 4 December 2010, Saturday, 10 am

2010-12-03T00:06:00.003+08:00

I will be giving a talk on Saturday, 4 December 2010, 10.00 am as part of the programs for the ongoing exhibition "Lee Aguinaldo: In Retrospect" which I curated with Victoria "Boots" Herrera in Ateneo Art Gallery. The talk has been generally titled "Modernist/Postmodernist Lee" but the talk really serves as the vehicle for me to deliver my ongoing essay on him for the upcoming book for Ateneo and Vibal Foundation Publishing. The title of my essay is "The Missing Link? Modernist Trope, Rupture, Variations." In this essay, I examine how Lee has been identified as a modern abstract artist and posit the necessity to rupture this notion in order to examine other facets of his practice.

Everyone is welcome to attend and there is free admission. The Ateneo Art Gallery is on the 2F Rizal Library Special Collections Building, Ateneo de Manila University, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Metro Manila 1108. You can try to find more specific directions at http://gallery.ateneo.edu. For inquiries, call IC or Thea at (632) 426.6488.

Photograph on the right is the invitation image for Lee's 1972 'painting' exhibition at Cultural Center of the Philippines. It is a photo taken of Lee by Nat Gutierrez.

Lee Aguinaldo exhibition opens today!

2010-10-26T09:10:00.003+08:00

"Lee Aguinaldo: In Retrospect", curated by Boots Herrera and myself, opens tonight at 6 pm at the Ateneo Art Gallery, 2nd level, Rizal Library Special Collections Building, Ateneo de Manila University, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Metro Manila 1108.

Exhibition talks by the curators
13 November, Saturday, 10 am - Lee Aguinaldo, Revisited by Boots Herrera
4 December, Saturday, 10 am - Modernist/Postmodernist Lee by Clarissa Chikiamco

Press release below:

LEE AGUINALDO: IN RETROSPECT

This October as part of its year-long 50th anniversary celebration, the Ateneo Art Gallery launches the exhibition Lee Aguinaldo: In Retrospect. Among the illustrious first generation of Philippine abstractionists in the 1950s, Lee Aguinaldo (1933-2007) is often identified with abstract expressionism and hard-edged and color field paintings. This representative exhibition of Aguinaldo’s output incorpo...rates his more celebrated styles as well as his other lesser known experimental approaches that also form an important part of his contribution to Philippine art.

A self-taught artist, Aguinaldo began his artistic career at a young age as among the artists in the 1952 annual show of the sanctuary of modern art, the Philippine Art Gallery (PAG). He was also part of the landmark show, “The First Exhibition of Non-Objective Art Exhibition in Tagala,” held in the PAG in 1953 with other artists such as Fernando Zobel, Vicente Manansala, H. R. Ocampo, Arturo Luz, Victor Oteyza, and Nena Saguil. Aguinaldo held his first solo show in 1956 and, later in the 1960s, won major awards in the Art Association of the Philippines Annual art competitions. Known as being a brilliant colorist and being very particular about his materials, Aguinaldo is credited by many for introducing local artists to the use of acrylic as an artist’s medium, particularly the high-end brand “Aquatec” which he used over marine plywood.

Although he was more known for his abstract works, Aguinaldo created figurative works throughout his life. He was a consummate drawer and he was among the first, if not the principal exponent, in adopting ideas of Pop Art by incorporating printed images from glossy fashion magazines like Harper’s Bazaar into his oil paintings, particularly the Galumph Series. He loved to experiment with different processes inspired by his up-to-date resources of art magazines. His mixed media works incorporate frottage or surface rubbings, pencil, image transfers, collages and acrylic emulsion, reminiscent of the works of American Pop artists Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers and Christo.

In the mid-1970s until the early 1980s, Aguinaldo closely collaborated with his photographer friends: the late portrait photographer Butch Baluyut and Wig Tysmans. This interest on the graphic arts produced a series of photo collages taken from print media and photographs “flattened” or sealed with acrylic emulsion.

The exhibition, curated by Ma. Victoria Herrera and Clarissa Chikiamco, presents Aguinaldo’s many facets as an artist. Further talks on Aguinaldo’s life and output will be given by the exhibition curators as part of the Ateneo Art Gallery’s Artspeak program: Lee Aguinaldo, Revisited by Ma. Victoria Herrera on Saturday, 13 November 2010, 10 am and Modernist/Postmodernist Lee by Clarissa Chikiamco on Saturday, 4 December 2010, 10 am.

The exhibitions runs until 5 February 2011. Museum hours until 6 November, Monday - Friday 8 am - 5 pm, Saturday 8 am - 12 noon. From November 8, Monday –Friday 8 am – 7:30 pm; Saturday 8 am – 6pm. The museum is closed Sundays, holidays and from 20 December 2010 to 5 January 2011. For more information, please contact IC Jaucian at (632) 4266488 or via email at ijaucian@ateneo.edu.

Lee Aguinaldo work? Last call

2010-09-24T06:10:00.005+08:00

6.31 am and I should be getting to sleep but I thought I'd squeeze in 30 minutes to write a quick overdue blog entry.

Since arriving in Manila from my one-month sojourn in Korea for the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course, I have been quite busy on the Lee Aguinaldo (1933-2007) exhibition I'm working on with my former teacher, Boots Herrera. I've mentioned this project in past entries and it has been a longtime coming. The seeds of the project started from my undergraduate project under Boots when I was a senior at Ateneo in 2005. So it is with a little incredulity that I realize the exhibition opening is fast approaching and all that has happened between me being a college senior to the current moment. A lot can happen in 5 years! Anyway, the exhibition opens 26 October, Tuesday, and will run until early February 2011.

What I've been particularly preoccupied on for the past few weeks is my essay for the Lee Aguinaldo book which will be launched in February before the closing of the exhibition. There are four of us writers, each of us with our own piece. One is a reprint of Rod Paras-Perez's text from Lee Aguinaldo's last solo exhibition which was in 1992 at the Lopez Memorial Museum. Cid Reyes is writing on Lee's abstract works. Boots is doing the biography. My essay looks at how Lee constituted and was constitutive of modernist ideas of the artist as well as examining his postmodernist practice which has been little remarked upon (and why it has been little remarked upon).

So my life for the past 2 1/2 weeks since I've been back has been Lee, the computer and texts helping me along my essay. I am trying to finish the essay by Sunday not only because we are beyond the original deadline already but I have put so much of my life on hold for this piece. I have not been writing for my column for Star (and I should be doing a review of the Gwangju Biennale which opened last September 2) or a couple of other things lined up. There are also I think so many things I need to attend to so I can plan my 2011 well and 'manifest' exhibitions/projects I have in mind before spaces fill up their calendar. But this essay on Lee deserves/demands so much of my concentration. Everything is on hold till I finish it.

I have put at the start of this entry an image of Lee which appeared in the 13 October 1963 issue of Asia Magazine. Shot by Dick Baldovino, I would argue this piece is a self-portrait because Lee composed a special work on glass plate for the photo which he stood behind. Now, to illustrate in a way what my essay is tackling, juxtapose that self-portrait above with another self-portrait of Lee done in 1985 below:

It is instant to visually register there is something different going on here but I think difficult to articulate how and why while locating it within a wider discourse. It always seems easy in retrospect once it's written but when you are articulating this - from images to thoughts to words (as thoughts are not immediately words) - it is difficult as well as exhausting. While I do veer towards the poetic in writing texts for contemporary art exhibitions, my essay here is academic in approach which means a lot more research than usual. The length is also considerable. Originally, I thought it would be 5,000 words. I remember even looking at the screen at about over 200 words thinking, 'I cannot imagine reaching 5,000.' Well, I am over 5,000 at the moment and still writing. I've estimated the final word count to be between 8,000 to 10,000.

So I'm going to get some shut-eye at last for a few hours but I just thought I would update people with what I've been up to since I've pretty much been a recluse that pops out here and there (for some interactivity with the outside world for my sanity). I'm going to some exhibitions later in the evening to some shows I cannot not go to but between sleep and that, I hope to have a productive day pumping out those words. Wish me luck I finish by Sunday. And for some last words for this entry - if you have a Lee Aguinaldo piece that you haven't contacted Boots and I about yet, this is the last call for you to tell us and for it to be included in the book. Seriously, if you have one, email me ASAP: letterstolisa@gmail.com

And I leave you with a good morning!

Last few hours in Korea

2010-09-07T12:36:00.002+08:00

I haven't written in over a month since arriving in Korea last 8 August for the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course. The course closed a few days ago and I decided to spend 3 days in Seoul before flying back to Manila. I'm gearing up to attack the massive load of work that awaits me and which I'm trying to start on in these last few hours before my flight to Manila tonight.

For the people here who have visited my site because we met in Korea - anyong haseo! I'm glad you took the time to visit! Do know there's still a lot of updating on my site to do. This site served initially as documentation of my art writing but I think I should write more about my curatorial ideas, curating projects and upload more images. But in any case, please stay in touch and I hope we get to meet some time in the future soon or work on something together!

I will miss many things but more importantly many people whom I've met here. But as one of my classmates said - this is just the beginning. And so... here's to beginnings!

Now, to work.

Third World biennial? (part 3/ conclusion)

2010-08-04T01:01:00.002+08:00

So finally, here is the conclusion of my article on the third Bagasbas Beach International Eco-Art Festival (BBIEAF). All in all, the word count of all three parts is roughly 5,500. It is quite long but there were a lot of issues to be teased out about this event.

Now that all three parts are out, it would be best - if you haven't read the other parts yet - to read it one after the other as one whole piece.

Third World biennial?

(Conclusion)

The first and second part of this article outlined the curatorial structure, contradictions, disorganization and poor conditions of the third Bagasbas Beach International Eco-Art Festival (BBIEAF) held from May 31 to June 6 in Daet, Camarines Norte. This final part looks at the potential of the festival for its future editions. For despite the lapses of the third BBIEAF, this festival or biennial should continue as long as modifications are put into place and a proper evaluation is made.

CURATORIAL POSSIBILITIES

As the previous parts of this ar-ticle discussed, the BBIEAF should keep its focus on the installations and not pursue the video and public art divisions they added this year. For the BBIEAF’s possibilities in this regard, it is constructive to turn to Cora Alvina, the curator of this BBIEAF’s installation division and the former director of the National Museum. Alvina has actually referred to her role in this BBIEAF as an exhibition designer more than a curator because the festival only brought her in belatedly after nearly all of the artists had already been selected. With little leeway to move in the selection and structure of the festival, Alvina was unable to realize prospective ideas she had for the BBIEAF.

These, however, reveal interesting curatorial possibilities. The most significant of these ideas, revealing Alvina’s strength and background in anthropology, is for the curator to run a workshop with the communities in preparation for the actual festival and for working with the artists on their bamboo installations. The workshop would attempt to unlock or put into gear the creative thinking the BBIEAF seeks as a tool for human and community development. A question that Alvina would ask the communities, for example, is “What can bamboo do?”, putting into play imaginative thinking with practical skills. The workshop would also then look for those who are particularly skillful and help them to develop this talent.

To encourage skill development, Alvina points out that it is intrinsic that the community members participating in the festival through constructing the installations should be paid. “To ensure the survivability of the craft form, show they can make a livelihood out of this,” she said. “Younger ones are not doing this because they think they can’t earn a lot from it.” The consistent realization of the festival every two years with its proper payment to those participating would also give the communities something to look forward to every time the event comes around, knowing they would be able to reap financial benefits.

Alvina also suggests the curator give the communities a say in the selection of the artists, letting them see the artists’ studies and considering which the communities find interesting. This way, the construction of the installations would have more relevance to the communities. In addition, Alvina thinks the immersion time for the artists should be extended from one evening to two nights and three days at the minimum to deepen the artists’ experience and bond.

In the same way that the communities prepare to work with the artists, I should also say that the artists should also be prepared for the immersion, for working with the communities on the installation and for other matters of the festival. A briefing was surprisingly not given to the artists upon their arrival when it is standard practice to do this for immersions, as students in high school and college who are required to do this well know. A brief lets the artists know what to expect and will allow them to arrange themselves accordingly for the week ahead (including deficiencies in transportation or accommodations, which should be mentioned then rather than discovering by surprise). It is also an essential time for the artists to ask questions and have them answered for everyone’s knowledge and benefit.

For indeed, the artists are meant to benefit from the festival as well. Alvina indicates these benefits to the artists as learning from a foreign culture and familiarization with a new material through Filipinos’ skills in craft making. The artist Stuart Ian Frost (Norway/UK) reiterated this, “For me the idea of being immersed in a community and to experience their culture and to learn about the way in which they live was the focal point. Not to mention the possibilities of discovering/sourcing new natural materials.”

Mia Corsag (Croatia) points to her developing a strong bond with her community as a highlight of her experience, “the week we had was not only about making a piece of art, but even more important, about building relations and friendships.”

Emmanuel Herbulot (France) had noted with delight on how his community contacted him post-festival, thanking him for giving them new ideas. These are positive factors from the festival that will be all the more enhanced with proper curatorial vision and professional management.

PROFESSIONAL CHANGES

The curatorial and organizational roles also need to be clearly delineated. Granted that these may change with each new curator brought into the festival depending on his or her curatorial vision, the BBIEAF organizational committee needs to discuss with the curator where whose responsibilities begin and end. Having said that, credit must go both to Alvina and Nonie Cartegena, Alvina’s curatorial assistant, in helping to keep this festival together and assist the artists.

The organization of the BBIEAF had fallen onto Daet locals without much experience in organizing art events. One can understand though the reasoning of BBIEAF founder Dr. Joaquin Palencia for employing locals rather than professionalized cultural workers from Manila: Providing training to locals and employing locals lets them learn, shows they do not always have to go to Manila to earn and allows the money to benefit those who need it more. Yet, proper training is difficult by being entirely thrown into experience — mistakes will be considerable and inevitable. Plausibly, BBIEAF could consider hiring the more experienced from Manila to head the organizing with the locals under their wings for at least two editions until the locals are trained enough to take over.

Alvina has also said that the planning for the next edition should begin at least fifteen months in advance. Indeed, with biennials, planning is constant for an event of this magnitude. To do this, however, the BBIEAF needs to find a constant source of funding to continue its operations to plan ahead. For these kinds of events, the National Commission of Culture and the Arts (NCCA) should consider allowing organizations to apply two years in advance for their funding. The NCCA release of their annual successful grant applications for projects of the next year give big projects too short a time to organize themselves properly for the event, particularly when counterpart funding in cash is difficult to come by.

DECENTERING AND TOURISM

Having been e-mailing with Chak Chung Ho (Hong Kong SARS China) about the festival, he noted, “Without BBIEAF, Daet will remain a tiny fishing and rice-paddy town forever. Activities thus changes can bring hope and attention to a poor rural district.”

Certainly, this is the power that a festival or biennial brings to each location that it is staged in. Rachel Weiss, writing about the sixth Havana Biennial in 1997 in ArtNexus, discussed this potential, “Ideally, a biennial is an opportunity to redraw the global map with the center newly located. As new areas log on to the global contemporary circuit, a biennial can magnetize a location, drawing in attention, ideas and works from faraway places and aligning them with the local reality. A biennial can also serve the parallel function of directing local attention (of both artists and public) outward toward those places, trends and individuals with strongest relevance to the interests of the biennial epicenter.”

In this, the BBIEAF has managed to successfully draw attention to Daet with press coverage and with international artists even flying at their own expense to participate in this event. This attention has strong potential to be channeled to BBIEAF’s aims, particularly through cultural tourism. While Dr. Palencia has asserted that the Daet locals are the main audience of the BBIEAF, tourists — specifically curators, artists, academics, patrons and art enthusiasts who are willing to visit such events of interest — will help to concretely contribute to the local economy while expanding appreciation and discussions on the festival. The BBIEAF should include programs to entice such tourists, such as a parallel conference on themes the BBIEAF touches upon, and work with the local Daet tourism office in improving the tourist infrastructure. Even with a small budget, simply having better websites and better writing would be a huge assistance in encouraging people to come (and thus, to spend their money in Daet). Indeed, Bagasbas Beach, quietly and happily enjoyed by the locals, has the makings of a tourist destination with its long stretch, fine sand and surfing-conducive waves that those there for the BBIEAF can surely enjoy as well.

The BBIEAF may well be the Philippines’ Third World biennial with its aim to improve the Third World situation of its locality. This “Third World biennial” includes as well its unfortunate disorganization and blunders that are well typical of a Third World organization. There are though undoubtedly exciting possibilities in its premise. The BBIEAF’s future editions will reveal how far or how short it will come into harnessing this potential and if they have genuinely learned from the staging of its past.

* * *

The author may be emailed at letterstolisa@gmail.com. Her blog of art writings is at http://writelisawrite.blogspot.com.

Part 3 not out yet

2010-07-27T22:14:00.002+08:00

I submitted my part 3/last chapter on the Third World biennial? article last week but I suppose Star didn't have space again as it didn't make it out last Monday. Perhaps the next? Thought I'd update as some people may be looking for it.

Third World biennial? (continued/ Part 2 of 3)

2010-07-23T00:29:00.003+08:00

The continuation of my article 'Third World biennial?' came out last Monday, 19 July.

You can go to the direct link here in Star or read it below.

Third World biennial?

(Continued)

The first part of this article mapped out the curatorial structure of the third Bagasbas Beach International Eco-Art Festival (BBIEAF) held last 31 May to 6 June 2010 and examined some of its contradictions in its aims and present format. It posited the BBIEAF as a Third World biennial—a title that had been given to the Havana Biennial for its exhibition of artists from Third World countries—in its emphasis on artists cultivating a relationship with Third World poor communities in Daet. Continuing the analysis, this article considers other aspects of the biennial, such as misjudgments in accommodations and organization, which also highlighted Third World-ness though in its more unfortunate aspects.

Accommodations Third World

While missteps are sometimes expected in any art event — and particularly an art event that occurs away from the center where the professionalized naturally gather — the incidents which occurred during the BBIEAF surpassed normal gaffes. While mild lapses can usually be overlooked, exceptional cases of disorganization deserve mention as these incidents do color the perceptions of those present in the event. Regardless of the desires of the Manila art scene, the art scene of the Philippines is in some capacity getting represented internationally by such a biennial in faraway Daet, particularly when the foreign artists are sent home without a tour of the museums and galleries in Manila.

To begin with, it may perhaps seem superficial to disparage about the accommodations of the artists as the living conditions provided do not normally occupy media space in discussions of biennials. The reason for this is that it is assumed, quite naturally, that the accommodations are decent—a basic and unremarkable necessity which allows everyone involved to focus on the art at hand. The BBIEAF artists certainly were not expecting a lot during the overnight immersions in their poor communities and were even touched and overwhelmed by the community’s hospitality, a trait that few would argue shows the best of Filipinos. The artists did, however, presume that the spartan accommodations for the rest of the festival period provided by the organizers would be clean and presentable (as indicated in details sent to them) even if modest. As the BBIEAF founder Dr. Joaquin Palencia noted and as also the artists well understood, it would be antithetical for them to stay in plush accommodations when they were supposed to continue developing their ties to the communities while making the installations with them.

What the artists were provided with, however, stretched the idea of “simplicity” as well as their patience. Staying at the grossly neglected Bagasbas Beach Tourist Inn directly by the beach and having just met one another, these tired strangers from wide-ranging cultures were shown to their rooms and were preposterously expected to share beds with each other (two to a bed), an arrangement that certainly should only be reserved for couples and familial relations at the most. Eventually, individual and proper beddings for everyone were arranged after a few nights of this overly intimate set-up.

Appropriate personal space was not the only thing unavailable, however, but running water as well. With running water accessible only from the very late evening to early morning hours, these artists were expected to shower at these irrational hours despite a full day of working under the pressing heat and humidity as the seasons swung from summer towards the rainy. The water setback was then solved by the sensible idea to store water in containers. Yet, the first attempt at this was rather comedic. Having gone to bed content at having some suitable water supply, some of the artists rose the next day to find the bucket empty. Questions were then exchanged as to who had taken a shower and used all the water — only to find out later that the container given to them by the organizers had a crack and the water had seeped out during the evening.

A premonition of these matters was perhaps signaled during the ride of the artists from Manila to Daet, the bus overheating and its air-conditioning periodically malfunctioning — resulting in a hellish 12-hour ride that marked the foreign artists’ introduction to Third World Philippines all too well. While it may be argued that these conditions would allow the artists to more ably relate to the conditions of their communities, these were not deliberate intentions of the organizers. Such a line of reasoning for these mishaps acts as a desperate excuse to take away from the all too apparent disorganization of this biennial — disorganization which directly affected the BBIEAF’s outcomes. Having experienced being in an organizational capacity myself, I am often quite sympathetic to organizers as I know handling these things is not easy. The slip-ups here, though, were simply all too pervasive.

Disorganization

Asides from the lack of time for preparation, the failure in proper organization may be partly accounted to the other divisions of the biennial that were added this year which spread the organizers much too thinly, particularly the video art section. While the brochure boasted Japanese experimental filmmaker and video artist Takahiko Iimura as the video art curator, he in actuality did not select any of the videos which were a part of the festival open call. He brought his own work and the works of some Japanese video artists, which seemed to be a standard package to show of Japanese video art abroad, that were presented in a single projection for one evening with a replay the next day. While it was a good opportunity to see these video artworks from Japan, it was lost in a biennial which places its core in art as a tool for development and development for the Daet communities in particular.

The video works to the open call and according to the BBIEAF theme were actually simplistically selected by the organizers. Yet, whatever appreciation that could be garnered from these pieces proved elusive anyhow by their absence on the evening they were supposed to be shown. The organizers had aimed to show the video works in multiple locations around the town of Daet—an idea that is as bold as it is foolish. Those with experience in mounting video art shows well know to expect a host of technological problems in mounting these works even in a single room with multiple players, projectors and monitors. Indeed, to spread it out throughout various locations with a limited team with little or no experience in mounting video works would only exacerbate the difficulties. In a tricycle which was supposed to show one work through a portable DVD player, for example, the battery of the player had run out by the time that I and my friend Rica Estrada had climbed in. Only two works in the five locations we were taken to in town were mounted and playing while a sixth by the beach showed only the projector’s brand name.

The apex of this disorganization was what happened to the video work of Diokno Pasilan. Unlike the open call with mailed in videos which did not necessitate the artists’ presence, Pasilan came to immerse himself as well with a poor community and create a video work in response. Choosing to focus on senior citizens as repositories of knowledge and to call attention to their value in the community, Pasilan photographed many of them individually and compiled these portraits to make a video that was essentially an homage to members of the community that seemed to be neglected and nearly forgotten. A few days before its showing, Pasilan had related how excited the senior citizens were to be photographed, some even primping themselves for the simple point-and-shoot affair. There was some confusion as to when it would be shown but when finally it was said to be up and running as arranged by the organizers, the group, which included the artist who had not been asked to install his piece, boarded the bus with a little curiosity and a lot of anticipation.

Upon disembarking the bus, however, an air of silence sank in — as did shock — at the sight of the projection. The video was shown against a municipal building whereupon no flat sheet was provided to make a proper backdrop for the projection on an edifice that had multiple windows, columns and a ledge bannered by a strip of red, white and blue. In effect, the video portraits were distorted, indistinct and moreover the video was not even shown in full screen (the menu and side bars of the computer display were visible). Making matters worse, the video shown was the incorrect version according to the artist, who had given a second and final DVD. This occurrence marked the transition from patience-testing blundering to already appallingly disrespecting an artist’s work.

The next evening, the work was projected on a wall of a building on the Our Lady of Lourdes College campus and displays were set up as well for the other video artworks. With the exception of Pasilan’s work, however, the video works just all seemed completely misplaced in a festival that places primary importance on community. Tanya Preminger, one of the artists in the installation division, commented that it was “almost as (if) there were two separate festivals.” Even the new public art division of BBIEAF, with two artists Jerusalino Araos and Tets Ohnari, seemed forced, lost and its curator, Benjamin Hughes II, was absent. The BBIEAF organi-zation’s efforts in these components would have been better served concentrating on the installation collaboration that is its center.

The installation artists could have benefited, for instance, from the organizing committee properly asking about and preparing for their needs in building their planned installations. This not having been done, there was, while minor, some unnecessary strain between artists over the selection of bamboo pieces and the lack of tools for building which needed to be shared between them. These things seemed to make the BBIEAF an artist edition of reality television shows—a kind of Survivor meets Big Brother, complete with intrigues.

On the latter — disorganization and poor conditions of an event that receives public funding in a Third World country create a rife environment for doubts to propagate on the proper use of funds. In such grim accommodations, who would blame the artists—who flew all the way from various countries at their own expense and received very token honorariums — or others if they wondered? Yet, the BBIEAF, which received P500,000 from the National Commission of Culture and the Arts (NCCA), is not the first or even an exceptional case of an event that has become subject to such rumors. Many of these incidents are difficult to say as having a basis or not as some expenses can be difficult to perceive unless one is in the organizing committee itself, in charge of providing things that cost money but others may take for granted. Yet, since this issue crops up so recurrently, the NCCA should probably address these matters for future events which receive funding by them by making budget and expense statements publicly available online as well as the events’ required terminal reports. In this way, transparency provides assurances for everyone involved as well as the added benefit of allowing others to learn from past projects and to plan their own events properly.

It would seem though, with all these conditions combined, that a perception of the BBIEAF looks all too dismal. While it perhaps may seem disheartening, these matters bear mentioning in order to make a holistic assessment for the festival’s future editions. Indeed, there are definite possibilities for the BBIEAF should it continue. This will be discussed next week.

* * *

The author may be emailed at letterstolisa@gmail.com. Her art writings are at http://writelisawrite.blogspot.com.

Next week

2010-07-12T02:17:00.003+08:00

Hello all,

Unfortunately, I received word during the weekend that there was no space again for part 2 of my article! So next week again (and I hope this is the last time!) and a part 3 to follow after that.

Sorry for the delay. My articles being published weeks after they are written is not uncommon but this is the first time it's being done for an article continuation. I don't really have control over this unfortunately as it's all with the paper. Thanks for your patience!

As for another update, I've finished editing the third episode of ARTiculation, featuring Ronald Caringal.
Pop over to the following youtube links to watch it:

Part 1/3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8iLgSJqHUE
Part 2/3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq6BmSgoyus
Part 3/3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OuvNu4sIe0

Update

2010-07-05T01:08:00.003+08:00

To those waiting for part 2 of my article 'Third World biennial?', I learned that there wasn't enough space in today's art section in Star to handle my shortly over 2,000-word continuation. So it will have to wait till next Monday (12 July). I now have time to revise it but unless I somehow am able to shorten it by a lot, there will be a part 3.

I'll also mention it here that I will be gone from Manila for a month from early August to attend the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course, which is being led by the NY-based curator Dan Cameron. I am very excited for this fantastic opportunity to learn from more experienced and senior curators and to meet younger curators from different countries as well.

And speaking of curating, I am thinking of writing less frequently or taking a break for a month or so from writing for my column to focus on research for my curatorial work. Well, we'll see how it goes but there's a part of me that needs my head space for it.

Also as an added note, I'd like to say I don't think of myself as "the art police" and some overly defensive emails I have received (not in response to any article that had been published but other matters I won't bother to detail) have made me realize that some may be nervous about being featured and called out in articles of mine for things that would not be received positively. And I find this quite ridiculous because in my overall body of work, it is rare for me to do such things and I have never focused my articles on simply catching those practicing unethical practices in the arts. My most extensive discussion on conflicts of interest was the very public National Artist Award controversy which several wrote about as well.

If in the course of a project I was asked and agreed to be a part of, I find out about a conflict of interest in the project that was not disclosed to me from the beginning - I would probably discuss this with the persons involved because I want to understand the situation. I am not a detective sniffing out for leads to do a newspaper expose so people shouldn't overreact. That kind of behavior actually makes it difficult for me to quietly excuse myself from projects. And excusing myself is not indicative of an opinion of the project being terrible - it could very well be fantastic. But it is really that I should have been informed of this conflict at the start which would have shown that the conflict was being handled transparently and I could have properly made a decision about my involvement. Trust is difficult to repair if a conflict is found out by some other persons or means other than the people who should be informing you about them. And pretty much, a "sorry, we should have told you" would suffice and be appropriate rather than a long defensive exposition involving good intentions/passion, which I think are unnecessary things to mention about the issue at hand. I found this quote from the Association of Art Museum Directors in one article I was reading - “Good intentions, being unprovable, are an inadequate defense against...charges of impropriety.... Every effort should be made to anticipate and address situations in which there is the appearance of conflict of interest, even if no actual conflict exists.”

While the above may peak people's interest about the particular project and conflict, these details really don't matter. My point is when I have questions or discussions about a professional matter, I think it's best to not project and to respond professionally as well. And if there is a conflict of interest (ideally there is none) - this should be handled transparently particularly to everyone invited to be a part of the project. If it's not, even not pushing through with this perceived conflict (after it is found out) does not change the difficulty of the situation and even could exacerbate it.

On a last unrelated note, I wrote the exhibition text of Mark Salvatus' current exhibition Attached in Drawing Room. The exhibition is on till 19 July. Catch it soon!

Third World biennial? (part 1)

2010-06-28T00:37:00.003+08:00

The first part of my article on the Bagasbas Beach International Eco-Art Festival is out in today's Philippine Star. I'll post some pictures here soon.

Third World biennial?
by Clarissa Chikiamco

This article is not about the Havana Biennial but about a curious event which occurred in Daet, Camarines Norte last May 31 to June 6. The third edition of the Bagasbas Beach International Eco-Art Festival (BBIEAF) transpired unbeknownst to many in the Manila art scene as it represented the Philippines as a biennale themed with art, environment and sustainability. While the Havana Biennial became known as the Third World biennial in its focus on exhibiting artists from the Third World, this designation may be more appropriate for the BBIEAF as this particular edition makes apparent.

Curatorial Structure

In the arts, a biennial or biennale refers to mega-exhibitions held every two years that are showcases for current trends in contemporary art. It originated in Venice, which had its first biennale in 1895, and gained momentum in the latter half of the 20th century as biennales and triennales (held every three years) established itself around the globe, done in the shadow as well of another formidable and expansive exhibition of contemporary art, Documenta (established in 1955 and held every five years in Kassel, Germany). The curatorial models for biennales vary widely as, in the early decades of the phenomenon at the very least, each attempted to make itself distinctive in order to jockey for visibility and position in the international art scene. As with any biennale, an evaluation of the BBIEAF needs to begin then by examining its aims, themes and curatorial model, which define the criterions of perspective to view it by.

Founded by artist Dr. Joaquin Palencia, the BBIEAF places its core in the belief that art is a tool for human and community development, themed as previously mentioned with art, environment and sustainability. It has lofty but perhaps foolhardy ambitions — “to share a new vision with the rest of the world, to foster hope, to make life better, to integrate Life and Art, Technology, and the fervent hopes of a Community, a People, a Nation, a World.” This incontrovertibly gives cause to too elevating expectations, particularly for the poverty-stricken people of Daet who are the target beneficiaries of the BBIEAF and the reason for its founding. As such, the festival is modeled on artists working with the Daet communities on the installation art component of the festival which forms its centerpiece.

In this installation aspect, artists propose a large-scale work beforehand that is to be composed using bamboo and materials that are to be sourced from the community. Once approved, the selected artists come to Daet, each being assigned a community and immersing themselves there for two days, including an overnight stay. Subsequent to that, the main site of the festival occurs at the shore of Daet’s Bagasbas beach — a quiet, clean and public beach frequented mostly by the locals — where the installations are built with the help of members of the communities for five days prior to the formal opening. Previous editions of the festival stressed a more local flavor of artists while the current one was more international with six foreign artists and one Filipino in this division. These artists were Chak Chung Ho (Hong Kong SAR China), Stuart Frost (Norway/UK), Emmanuel Herbulot (France), Irma Lacorte (Philippines), Mia Orsag (Croatia), Tanya Preminger (Israel) and Matthew Slaats (USA).

Fettered by little time to prepare for this festival as news of the approved P500,000 grant from the National Commission of Culture and the Arts (NCCA) came only early this year, the BBIEAF organization committee rushed to put this up in only a few months’ time. They approved all the foreign artists that answered an open call for proposals which fit the following selection criteria: (1) the artist has to be from a faraway culture so the impact of the immersion is maximized; (2) there should be no duplication of countries of which the artists are from; (3) the work proposed should require a level of interaction from the community in its building and be realizable.

It was only after the foreign selections were done that former National Museum director Cora Alvina was brought in as the installation art curator and chose Lacorte to participate as well. The third BBIEAF also added two segments which were not present in the first two editions: video art, curated by Japanese experimental filmmaker and video artist Takahiko Iimura, and public art, curated by Benjamin Edward Hughes II. The addition of these segments testifies to the BBIEAF’s aspirations of a biennale-like status in its expansion. As will be discussed in the second part of the article next week, however, these added components, were completely superfluous, deviated from the festival’s vision and strained the organization committee’s efforts and resources.

Contradictions

With such proclamations of attempting to make life better particularly for the poor communities, the central question that is to be asked of BBIEAF is how? Indeed, in a country that has an overabundance of the impoverished, carrying out a possible solution through art is impressive and intriguing, particularly since art has to still gain significant traction here in its recognition as an important asset of the country’s milieu and a potential source in fueling economic engines.

The manner in which the festival tries to realize this though ranges from the vague to the concrete but glaringly lacking measures. Discussion with the founder reveals that the festival intends for the communities to develop by unfastening the creative and innovative thinking of its members through the interaction with the artists and the problem-solving entailed in manifesting the artworks’ constructions. This thinking and the craft-making capacity involved are ideally to be applied by the community members to their own lives and livelihood — but only it seems through their own initiative. Nothing is provided to validate and carry this over in tangible fruition after the festival is over. While the sentiment that art swings open doors to creative thinking and is beneficial to anyone open to its possibilities is certainly agreeable, the indeterminate character of its real-world application was disappointing after much anticipation created by the festival.

These advantages also become negated by what is, it seems, the principal flaw of the BBIEAF — not paying the members of the community who help construct the artists’ works and expecting them to participate simply by volunteerism. The artist Lacorte shared that not even gasoline allowance was provided for her community team members to get to and from the working site and their residences and she related her troubled feelings as she witnessed one of her members fill up a precious 20 pesos of gas. While the participating community members were provided with meals like everyone else, taking them away from their homes without providing them with wages certainly would affect also their families who need their support, as Lacorte pointed out, in what is a hand-to-mouth existence. It does not seem like such a long leap to agree with her that the festival feels insensitive to the people they claim to be doing this for.

In terms of concrete returns, the Our Lady of Lourdes College Foundation, the host of the festival and the school owned by Dr. Palencia’s family, promised each participating community one scholarship for one of its members — the recipient, as indicated by Dr. Palencia in an interview, to be decided between the community. While the gift of education is certainly welcome, its benefiting one member of the community (and in effect, this person’s family) does not seem fair to the others’ time and effort in the project. Having the community also decide the recipient themselves also conjectures strong possibilities of creating rifts between them as people expectedly will jostle for the prize for their own family’s benefit.

The other way in which the BBIEAF attempted to deliver more definite returns to the communities was by providing them with free parallel seminars on livelihood, resource identification, product design and micro-financing. However, how far can these lessons go without more practical provisions for the beneficiaries to enable them?

Gratefully, there may be possible future financial benefit to some of the community participants though it is through artist, rather than festival, undertakings. Frost, who, like the other artists, has already returned home, is looking into sourcing raw materials from the community as well as commissioning work for his exhibitions overseas. He says, “For me I intend to stay in touch with the people from the community and work closely with (Imoy) the master carpenter. This collaboration I hope will not only benefit him and his family but also the community that he lives in.” He adds as well though that it “is obviously up to the individual artist in which way they want to approach such an opportunity.”

Reflecting on the festival, Slaats revealed a certain vulnerability the artists faced. “While the ideas of community development and support were there on paper, I am very curious as to the reality of long term sustainability or interaction coming out of the exhibition. The question of how does this dialogue continue was foremost on my mind the last few days of the exhibition and still is. How can I continue to support the community I worked with? While I’d love to continue the interaction, being on the other side of the world makes it difficult. I will just say that I’ve been inspired by these people and will forever be grateful for their hospitality and kindness.”

He made sure to point out though that these thoughts form a larger question raised by socially-based art practices. While true, the weight of these matters would probably not be so forceful if the artists knew that there was some mechanism managed or initiated by the festival to deliver concrete long-term benefits to the community from this specific interaction. After having done some creative training with the artists in the building of the works, it would have been rewarding if, for example, the community participants were to put this to practice in a practical arena for them, such as being hired in the making of furniture or handicrafts and really bridge this creativity thinking into sources of income. A tangible thing in place would sustain the benefits of the interaction long after the interaction is over.

Instead, though, the community development of the festival is afflicted by a pervasive uncertainty which causes an evident amount of pressure and anxiety on the artists who have developed strong emotional bonds with their communities. As the artists now reside back in their homes which indubitably have better and far more comfortable conditions, the concerns produced by the Third World-ness of this biennial must surely haunt them still.

* * *

The analysis of the BBIEAF continues next week. E-mail the author at letterstolisa@gmail.com. Her art writings are at http://writelisawrite.blogspot.com.

"But I could do that!"

2010-06-14T05:35:00.004+08:00

My article "But I could do that!" is out in Star today. You can click here for the direct link in Star or read it below.

The image I gave to Star to use is Lee Aguinaldo's Explosion No. 141 in the Ateneo Art Gallery collection. As many of you who regularly read me know, I'm cocurating an exhibition on Lee for Ateneo later this year. While I did not discuss Lee in my article, I felt it was appropriate to submit this image of his Pollock-influenced work. In the course of my talking about my work for the exhibition and on Lee, I have heard people (more often than usual) say, "But I could do that!" This article is a response to that. Indeed, the article is addressed to these people in particular, an audience I have to acknowledge I don't normally address in my writings on art because they're unlikely to read it in the first place (though I think my articles are often approachable enough to those without that much knowledge in the arts). However, in the offshoot I may capture some renegade non-art people into reading the article, I thought it would be worth writing as the effort to champion the cause of modern and contemporary art, though small, is worth it... Who knows - perhaps at least one person's perception may change?

I also have to mention here that not all modern and contemporary works are equal... Quality varies. Reading and regularly going to exhibitions and art talks both here and abroad will help refine one's eye and mind to start discerning quality. I did not mention this in the article because I felt it was going to confuse the audience I'm trying to address here but if one of those in this audience made it as far as visiting my blog then he/she should know - quality varies. It will be frustrating trying to understand why one work or one artist is valued more than others but it is important not to be discouraged. It is also important to look at museums who take a lead in this as arbiters of quality. I will - for the record - mention that not all museums are equal either... but I'll stop here.

"But I could do that!"

Many say this when encountering modern and contemporary art forms, whether for the first time or not. Framed papers pure white? Paintings of pure abstraction? Scattered everyday objects around the room? “But I could do that!” Said often in quick reflex, it is accompanied by attitudes which can range from confusion to good humor and to, unfortunately, the maliciously arrogant.

Certainly, I believe those who say this need to give pause. There is a necessity likewise, however, to understand where such quick assumptions come from. “But I could do that!” stems from a preconceived widely-held idea of art, mainly art as craft that gives value to creating images as they are seen in reality. It demands of art not only that it be figurative but that it be technically skillful — what separates the artist from the ordinary person. The medium commonly affixed to this idea is oil painting though it gives room to works using graphite as well.

There is some merit to this idea. Before the artist became artist, he was at first craftsman. It was during the Renaissance which prized the idea of the individual as genius that the artist attained high stature, though his virtuosity remained an essential part of his repertoire, a reason for his celebrity. When many think “art,” they think of the Renaissance idea of art, including its penchant for oil painting when its usage became popular.

While the idea of artist as celebrity remains popular today, much has changed in the time since the Renaissance, particularly in the last 150 years. The invention of photography, for example, freed artists from simply having to reproduce images as seen in nature. World War I and II had a huge impact on the art world — the Dada movement, one of the most singularly important sources of contemporary art, rising from the disillusionment of war after the first; the value given to modern art after its crucifixion during the second. Artists also questioned long-held ideas of art and attempted to subvert the institution. Performance, installation and video, coming to prominence in the 1970s, were part of the challenge to art as commodity. Conceptual art endeavored to resist the fetishization of art as object and placed eminence on art as idea. Multiculturalism and gender studies contested the idea of artist as the straight white Western male. The times also are simply different — the methods in capturing the dynamism and complexity of contemporary life are also in this age equally dynamic and complex.

This article, however, is not meant to be a lesson in art history. To begin appreciating modern and contemporary art, knowledge of art history is surprisingly not requisite. Indeed, the ones sometimes who have been actually quite receptive to appreciating contemporary art are those without any art background at all and therefore, with no preconceived idea of art. While helping out C3, an independent art space in Melbourne, Australia, I personally observed visiting preschool children happily engaging with the teacher’s questions on the art on show. The artist Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, who interacts and works with construction workers in her pieces and through her collaborative group Martinez Art Projects, recalled during an interview that the workers are interested and approach her about the work she does and that they encounter while helping in installation. Another artist, Lyle Buencamino, reiterated this to me as well in his experience with gallery hands.

While suggestions such as talking to the artists and the curators, looking up previous works of the artists, going to exhibitions regularly, reading the exhibition notes and delving into art books are helpful in furthering one’s grasp of modern and contemporary art, the real foremost condition to initiate its comprehension and appreciation is simply having an open mind. And with this, I would also add letting go of the idea that art should be beautiful — a pursuit, as Hitler internationally and the Marcos years locally have taught us, that in its narrowness and rigidity can be rimmed with danger.

Admittedly, appreciating it can be daunting because of the way much art is presented — cold white walls, strange specialist language, everyone else seeming to understand and, moreover, expecting the uninitiated to understand. To this I would say, it is essential for those who work in and with different kinds of art spaces to meet others halfway and be just as open to guiding in its appreciation. This, however, must be distinguished from spoon-feeding. Appreciation of modern and contemporary art will always remain elusive without some thinking of one’s own.

Let me recount as well two responses to this “But I could do that!” kind of thinking that I deem quite satisfactory.

The first response I heard over a decade ago, when I was the organizational head of my high school art club. Our moderator, the artist Pepper Roxas, had whipped out a book that I remember to be on Jackson Pollock and was showing it to us. “People say when they see this kind of work, ‘But I could do that,’” she said. “But the thing is…you didn’t.”

The second response I gathered from the director of the modern art museum the Ateneo Art Gallery, Ramon Lerma, while interviewing him for a different article a few days ago. He said, “Two things, I often challenge people when they come to a gallery and I hear comments like that — ‘Really? Let’s see you try.’ That’s number one. Number two, even if they attempt to, I ask them — ‘Would you be willing to spend the rest of your life just doing that? And stake your very identity on doing what you belittle as something trivial or facile?’”

There is a depth to modern and contemporary art so terrifying that it seems infinitely easier to dismiss it, to brand it elitist, to presume one knows better. Yet, for those who dare to take its ride — to open their thoughts, to open their minds, to let something change them in ways little and profound — the effort can admittedly be dizzying but so, too, can be its rewards.

* * *

The author may be e-mailed at letterstolisa@gmail.com. Her art writings can be found at http://writelisawrite.blogspot.com.

Article pending

2010-06-09T23:50:00.003+08:00

No article to post at the moment but I do have an article pending to be printed in Philippine Star. This article addresses the "But I could do that!" response of many people when encountering modern and contemporary art. As those who read my last post know, I was considering writing about it and I finally decided it was the right time.

My next article for Star will be on the Bagasbas Beach International Eco-Art Festival which took place in Daet, Camarines Norte, last 31 May to 6 June 2010. I was there from 2-5 June and while I will reserve my commentary on the festival at the moment, I will deviate from art a little to say that the beach was really great and it is worth visiting on weekdays if you are looking for a calm, relaxing vacation to get away from people. It is a bit of a hassle to get there - 10 hours by bus/car or 1 hour by plane followed by 2 hours by car/van. But the reward is a clean, long stretch of a beach with very fine sand (so much so it managed to get inside my watch), waters that are refreshing but not cold and most importantly a quietness that is difficult to find in other beaches that have already become well-known tourist spots. It's a public beach and you'll often find locals there swimming, surfing and doing other water sports (there are waves and the current is supposedly quite strong) but they aren't many and they seem to be just as happy in quietly enjoying the beach. I enjoy Boracay like many other Filipinos but I completely appreciated being able to unclutter my mind for a few days even as I was working on some things (writing about art) while there. I stayed at the beachfront place called Catherine's, which just opened last March. If you are considering going and have some questions, email me and I would be happy to reply.

Last month, I finished wrapping up an exhibition write-up for Costantino Zicarelli's exhibition at Art Informal, We are the kids your parents warned you about, which was held last March to April 2010. I had an initial write-up that was published in an exhibition brochure at the time of the exhibition but after discussing with the artist, I did some revisions to both our satisfaction. I understand he plans to make a proper catalogue for this exhibition and you'll be able to buy it directly from him.

Currently I am working on the exhibition write-up for Mark Salvatus' exhibition at Drawing Room at the end of the month. That + the BBIEAF article + more work on the Lee Aguinaldo show is going to take up most of my time for June. Things seem to look like they are only going to get busier from here - I will also be gone for a month from August to September on an art-related matter. I'll post more about this soon.

I would like to thank those of you who have reached out to talk to me via email or through other online means. I enjoy receiving your emails whether it is meant to be encouraging or to further discuss points I raise in my articles (or even just about art in general). They've come at a very critical point for me and I very much appreciate it.

Late in the evening and...

2010-05-25T02:30:00.002+08:00

It is 2.30 am and I am working on revising an overdue exhibition write-up and charging the trusty Flip camera (which I use to record Visual Pond ARTiculation videos) for an artist interview I'm doing tomorrow.

While sleep is probably the best option for now given that I have to be up at 5 hours for morning tennis in Manila's humid summer weather, my thoughts are wandering about, such as:

(1) what is the topic of my next column?

I have done some initial research on doing an article asking how exactly viable is video art here as a collected art form. I need to conduct more interviews though and given my schedule for the week, it's not going to make it for the art's section Friday deadline. Granted that there isn't always space every week, I have committed to myself to writing for my column more often - ideally submitting every time a piece gets published. It may be 1-3 weeks sometimes before it comes to print but as long as I keep on writing and submitting after each one gets published, I'll be maximizing my productivity. I may really have to skip out on submitting this week though with several deadlines on my plate to Monday.

Another possible article idea was struck by reading this article in the New York Times a few weeks back. It was a review of an exhibition featuring artists from a certain country and the author questioned the necessity to package it as so, given how borderless/global we are now. I do agree at least with the point of questioning it, which has led to reflections of how sometimes I may be pigeonholing myself here with "Philippine art"/"Philippine art scene" and I would say that "I" is actually "we" - there are certainly a lot like me. I could probably rattle off some things right now that have been meandering in my head on this though I'm not sure if these thoughts are ready for an article yet. Perhaps it may ok to blog about them to start putting some form to it but I'm afraid of committing verbal diarrhea (as I think all of us online should be) or people mistaking initial musings as something definitive. Anyway, there is an upcoming symposium in Amsterdam on visual culture and national identity that I'm sure would help tease these thoughts out but if only funds were that free-flowing that I could just jet to Europe for a 2-day symposium, no problem!

(2) gosh, if those of us in the arts had a dollar for every time someone told us or at least thought to himself/herself, "But I could do that!", we'd probably have a lot of money...

How many times have I heard it or it's been said to me? Perhaps also this could be another article idea - to address this thinking that like it or not, those of us in the arts have to face that's how many - even perhaps majority - outside of the arts think. I have actually entertained writing about this for many years now but at times I wonder if writing about it will only be futile. Do the people who think and say that actually read the newspaper's art section? The people who read it, I would assume, are already those in the arts who have already bridged that kind of thinking. A couple of years back, I wrote a paper in university on what curating is, what does a curator do and converted it to article form and published it in my column. It addressed the questions I get very often, given that people I'm meeting for the first time usually ask me to explain when they ask me about my occupation. I still get those questions all the time certainly - that's to be expected - but I wonder if writing and publishing it actually made a difference to one reader or another. I wasn't expecting people to email me saying "Ok, now I understand what curating is" but, of course, again you can't help but wonder.

Though I do think answering "But I could do that!" would also be a challenging exercise.

Hmmm...

(3) blog revamp

As some of you might have noticed it, I changed my blog from "Articipation" to "Art Matters" ("matters" here is a noun and not a verb. The verb version is too much "carry the torch" advocacy for me). I want to stop with the cutesy play on the word "art" at this point - the ARTiculation contemporary video art series probably being the last for a while - and just make it straightforward. The blog is on art matters, particularly where I detail my projects, exhibitions and writings. My column in Star stays with the same name for consistency's sake and also, I don't mind that name at all really for the column. I meant "Articipation" as a play on the word "anticipation," a curious feeling that I believe pervades the art scene and contemporary art in particular. Yet, to have my blog under the same name is a little too much. "Art Matters" seems to simplify things for me.

A bit of change in colors - those who've been checking the past couple of weeks or so would have noticed. I think I'm trying to make it not just sound but look more straightforward.

A pang of regret - I'm wondering why years ago I decided to put this blog with this writelisawrite blog address rather than something simpler like my name? The reason then, however, I didn't make the address something like lisachiki.blogspot.com or lisachikiamco.blogspot.com is that my last name is misspelled so often. It is very hard for most people to get it right.

Still, I am tempted actually to move the whole blog now to an address of my name although this seems complicated. And well, really, what is an address if a blog is serving its purpose?

(4) quotes/citation confusion/"o" vs. "ou"

Some may notice that for the past couple of years, I sometimes may be using single quotes rather than double quotes that are de rigueur in American-style writing. Also, I sometimes may switch into putting punctuations outside of the quotes, rather than inside. This is, of course, a product of studying/having studied in an Australian institution which follows a different system for using quotes or citations. I actually still prefer the Australian system - single quotes look so much cleaner; putting the punctuation outside the quote makes a lot more sense in many cases - but I'm trying to get back into the habit of using double quotes, at least for my newspaper/magazine articles. Yet, by habit, I do get confused and become inconsistent at times. Luckily, my article is double-checked and edited for this before it goes to print.

I also do have to consciously pause myself for the spelling of certain words - i.e. "color" vs. "colour." I actually got so used to the British kind of spelling that it has been difficult to switch. Shallow things such as these give me an inkling on what it must be like for first and second generation immigrants to go through a cultural identity crisis.

Ok, enough meanderings! Time to sleep.

The Struggle for Philippine Art - Then and Now (continued)

2010-05-24T00:25:00.007+08:00

Here is the continuation of my article last week, The Struggle for Philippine Art - Then and Now. In the printed and online version in the Philippine Star website, I unfortunately gave the wrong address for the Green Papaya website, forgetting to include the 'art' before projects. It's http://greenpapayaartprojects.org. Thanks very much to Green Papaya's Artistic Director Peewee Roldan for answering my questions and sending me pictures.

Captions for photos below:
>Bea Camacho's 11-hour performance at the Turbine Hall, part of Green Papaya Art Projects' program for No Soul for Sale.

>Yason Banal's durational performance "The Wrong Place" at Green Papaya Art Projects' space at No Soul for Sale with some young Brit artists and students.

Photos courtesy and copyright Green Papaya Art Projects.

The Struggle for Philippine Art - Then and Now

(Conclusion)

Last week I discussed some criticisms I had of the current art scene that paralleled similar issues outlined in the book The Struggle for Philippine Art by Purita Kalaw-Ledesma and Amadis Guerrero, written over 30 years ago. Stopping off in discussing the quest for international recognition, I would like to continue by discussing funding, funding structures and the pursuit to improve the quality of art.

In The Struggle for Philippine Art, it was related how that hothouse for modernism, the Philippine Art Gallery, founded in 1950, struggled to make ends meet. Founder Lyd Arguilla had even been “driven to tears because there was no money to pay for the lights.”

It could be said that the situation is similar today for independent art spaces that are brazen sites for artistic experimentation. Occupying a critical position that withholds from being swallowed by the commercial gallery apparatus and the supposed behemoths of institutions, independent art spaces, also called artist-run or alternative, provide a crucial threshold for contemporary art, a more accessible environment ripe for the speculative. There have been a few of these spaces throughout the years — those that have folded in the past decade include Big Sky Mind, Surrounded by Water and Future Prospects. The artists that have passed through their doors already form an important part of today’s “who’s who” in the art scene.

It seems inevitable, however, for independent art spaces to close. While funding for projects is difficult enough to scout for, these spaces need money for day-to-day expenses — the most difficult to find. Operational costs are the basic necessities which funding institutions nearly always shy away from, preferring instead to back output-type undertakings such as events or publications. Without stable funding, time tick-tocks on the expiration date of these spaces, which just like PAG 50 years ago, need money “to pay for the lights.”

One of the longest running of these spaces is Green Papaya Art Projects, founded in 2000 by Peewee Roldan and Donna Miranda. Their efforts in contributing to the Manila art scene were recognized in the invitation extended to and the participation of Green Papaya in the 2010 edition of “No Soul for Sale.” Billed by the New York Times as “the Olympics of nonprofit groups,” “No Soul for Sale” is self-described as “a festival of independents that brings together the most exciting not-for-profit centers, alternative institutions, artists’ collectives and underground enterprises from around the world.” Held in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London from May 14 to 16 for the Tate Modern’s 10th anniversary and curated by Cecilia Alemani, Massimiliano Gioni and the artist Maurizio Cattelan, each invited group had to be self-reliant in finding their own funding to participate in the convention.

After informing people and institutions for their need for financial assistance, Green Papaya received two major donations, one from the Ateneo Art Gallery and the other from art benefactor Olivia Yao, which covered the costs for the brochures and posters. Other donations and fundraising efforts were made and, while deeply appreciative of the support received, Green Papaya unfortunately did not make enough to cover the significant airfare, accommodation and set-up costs that are expected when participating in such an occasion. The request for funding to the National Commission of Culture and the Arts (NCCA) was denied, strangely because the event wasn’t in the “list of prestigious international events” identified by the visual arts committee. Post-event and after advancing personal funds to participate, Green Papaya plans to appeal.

Incidents like this show that the funding structure of the NCCA needs to be re-examined. The first questions offhand may be: What is this “list of prestigious international events” and how is inclusion in the list determined? Isn’t an event held at the Tate Modern prestigious enough? Yet, it only foreshadows more difficult things that need to be asked, such as how accessible are the funds for the arts to those who need them? Is the NCCA funding the art scene in the ways the scene needs support? If not, what concrete steps must be taken in order to bridge the expectations the art community has of the NCCA regarding what it actually does? The schism between the NCCA and the community seems to have gotten wider in recent years, the government having an increasingly notorious reputation as a consistently unreliable source of support for the arts. Support in tangible materials is obviously in short supply but it goes beyond that to demonstrate a demoralizing lack of appreciation and understanding of the government of its country’s art scene.

In countries which had been reliant on government funding that has been declining in recent years, art institutions, organizations and artists increasingly turn to private support, such as businesses, to fill the gap. Locally, however, these are wanting. The few businesses which do support the arts rarely do so progressively. Caught both by habit and name branding, corporate participation in the arts consists mostly of company-sponsored art competitions, some further marred by repetitive, folksy, nationalistic, value-oriented themes. Of course, by “art” competition, it is nearly always going to be painting or two-dimensionally based.

The Struggle for Philippine Art details the reason for initiating the Art Association of the Philippines competitions, first beginning in 1948, as being to improve the quality of art. In contemporary times, however, most of these art contests do not seem to really do much in this aspect. Its effect instead has been to inspire copycat painters rather than prestige, it has already become comic. How is this actually supporting or improving the quality of art, particularly long term?

There is money hovering for the arts it seems and there are also decent intentions as well. These funds and intentions need to be channeled in a way that meets the basic needs of the art scene and develops innovative and challenging programs through a spirit of philanthropy, which is quite distinct from sponsorship. The latter case is and would certainly still be welcome but again, it is a matter of having it in a proper conduit. It should then also be professionally branded enough so that corporations are appropriately recognized and would thus be encouraged to continue more progressive kinds of exchanges.

One example for private support may be in the form of bequests, given to museums here to upgrade their facilities or to play a more active role in collecting art rather than awaiting donations. Another example would be extensive travel grants and residencies for local artists and curators to exhibit abroad and to have foreign counterparts visit as well. Even something such as funding overhead expenses for independent art spaces, as mentioned earlier, would be a radical idea. There are many ways that others have surely already dreamt of. These can be discussed in more detail another time.

I ended the first part of this article by saying “The international recognition of a country’s artists can really sometimes be (only) as substantial as the budget it provides for it.” To this, as the title of the Ayala Museum exhibition of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma’s collection underscores, I would add vision as well. Grounded in concrete resources and a healthy sense of reality, an art scene can — and will — only progress as far as our vision can take us.

* * *

Green Papaya is still looking for funds to cover the expenses incurred in their participation in the “No Soul for Sale,” festival of independents. Contact greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com for further information to help. Their space is located at 41B T. Gener Street corner Kamuning Road, Quezon City; website at http://greenpapayaartprojects.org. The author may be reached at letterstolisa@gmail.com. Her art writings are at http://writelisawrite.blogspot.com.

The Struggle for Philippine Art - Then and Now (Part 1)

2010-05-18T10:13:00.009+08:00

I'm posting my article which appeared in yesterday's Philippine Star. I've had some interesting feedback/reactions and I've been enjoying having a discussion. So for those who haven't and been wanting to, do feel free to email me.

On another note - someone emailed thinking that my article was calling for a board/committee to regulate the art scene and told me it was a crazy idea. I agree - that's a crazy idea! That's definitely not what I'm after and I'm hoping most understood it was really ethics I was advocating - a community that doesn't need a committee and written rules because it has the maturity to value ethics and practice it. There are always going to be dodgy people wanting to do dodgy things but if the community truly values ethics, it can regulate itself. If majority, for example, refuse to work with people who are guilty of perpetuating conflicts of interest, these people will have no choice but to conform to the "rules" majority abide by. It was actually quite interesting to witness this in practice during my time abroad - to see how their system operated and to question why it operates this way.

The Struggle for Philippine Art - Then and Now

The ongoing Ayala Museum exhibition “A Vision of Philippine Art,” featuring selected artworks from the collection of art patroness and Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) founder Purita Kalaw-Ledesma (1914-2005), is best complemented by a reading of The Struggle for Philippine Art, the book which Ledesma and Amadis Guerrero co-authored in 1974. Indeed, to comprehend Ledesma’s vision, this book is requisite reading as it outlines the difficulties in the Philippine art scene back in the day and how these setbacks were managed when artists at that time had yet to earn even the basic recognition as, Ledesma and Guerrero have written, “‘respectable’ member (s) of society.” Looking at how artists are today held in such high esteem and earning adequately (even highly), it seems that the Philippine art scene has progressed significantly from the time the AAP was founded over 60 years ago.

In reading the book, however, it seems inescapably that many of the issues present in the art scene then are still issues that are at hand now, albeit perhaps in different forms. Reviewing some of these issues seems to be a worthy endeavor if only to remind ourselves that, for the Philippine art scene, there is still a lot more work to be done.

Professionalization

A most salient issue in the founding of the AAP, an association for artists, collectors, benefactors and enthusiasts, was its professionalization. Unethical practices were a concern as were payment of dues, tardiness and its running as an organization. An AAP board member, businessman C.M. Hoskins, assisted in addressing these — having the AAP run like a business and putting strict measures in place so compliance on dues and submissions became a necessity. At that time, the AAP was a critical organization in advancing Philippine art so membership, and therefore the requirements for membership, were essential.

Today, membership in any organization is needless for those practicing in the arts (artists, writers, curators, those who work in and with galleries and museums). While this resembles art scenes abroad which have no overarching structure regulating it, it seems ours in particular is characteristic of an anarchic free-for-all, which fails to put a firm grip on — and a halt — to slippery unethical practices.

For one, the pervading artist-gallery system allows artists to show in several galleries. While there is nothing wrong with this in itself — even allowing artists more freedom — this also leaves artists vulnerable to being approached directly by collectors and dealers who want to pay only artist prices, even haggling for discounts, a very awkward position for artists to be in. The loose arrangements give too much room to those who do not have the artists’ best interests in mind. Galleries, for their part, will of course only take an artist so far without exclusive contracts or commitments.

The issue of fakes and authentication also abound. The prevailing system for authentication seems to be guided only by “experts’” eyes, or that of the artist’s family, and while the eye is arguably and will always be critical here, one wishes that there was a kind of science involved to ground these findings, particularly when the authentication is in dispute. The practice as well of charging percentage of the artwork’s value (for authenticating) or percentage of sales (curating in commercial galleries) are also inherent conflicts of interest that put judgment on the line. Flat fees should be the norm here.

Also existing are dodgy publications — a magazine, for example, that purports to be about Philippine art but misleads in its promotion of a certain gallery and its artists. There is also the case of a contributing writer in one daily newspaper who will write a feature or “review” on an artist — if the artist pays a fee of a certain amount. Writers for exhibitions, on the other hand, are fortunate if the gallery even allots a budget to pay them for their work, rather than leaving it to the artist as an option. Payment for writers by galleries should already be standard.

There are certainly other matters that can fall here — the art scene is not without its gripes or its scandals. Professionalizing the art scene, however, entails more than simply fixing procedures and having rules. It is having people recognize, practice and, most significantly, value ethics in the arts. While the AAP had been there in earlier days to try to have artists and others toe the line, for the art scene to mature in these times, there is a need for community and self-policing, grounded in a comprehension and expectation of trust certain positions and tasks hold.

Being Behind The Art Scene Abroad; The Quest For International Recognition

The Struggle for Philippine Art notes, ‘‘Foreigners who came to see works of Filipino artists during the early ’50s invariably commented that they lagged behind the rest of the world….” The same might be said today at least in terms of media being used. While video and installation have become the predominant media abroad, which is very apparent in the defining art exhibitions of our times — the biennales — most artists locally are still painting.

Artists should be able to choose their medium, whether it be painting, performance, photography, video or installation. There is absolutely nothing amiss in painting. The problem, however, is if patronage is situated in such a way that artists feel like they have no choice but to paint to make a living and therefore avoid or very limitedly explore other media in effect. Artists abroad can afford to be more ambitious in their undertakings, knowing that there are institutions and collectors who acquire media of a reproducible nature, massive difficult-to-store installations and art with materials of inherent vices. There is also the reward, for impressive artists of any media, of major commissions by different institutions, biennales and art fairs. Painting is fine as a medium but how dominant would the medium be here in the Philippines if artists were assured of the same buttress if they chose to specialize in something else? There are too few institutions and individuals who are backing contemporary art beyond painting. The art scene is not determined only by the artists — patronage should never be undermined in its critical role in shaping the art scene and creating opportunities for how far artists, as well as curators, can go.

Ledesma and Guerrero expressed optimism about the graphic arts back then, “‘Because the materials are inexpensive… and because one can print as many copies as one wishes, it has less appeal. However, through the years it has progressed from a mere hobby to an art form, and in the years to come, it will surely gain in importance.” Those in the position to give different media due importance are those who write, commission and collect (and therefore, preserve). Nearly 40 years after the book was written, art of reproducible media has still to secure robust support in the art scene here.

Interconnecting with this is the pursuit for international recognition. As Ledesma and Guerrero wrote back then, ‘‘The feeling grew that the Flipino artist was as good as anyone, and the only way to demonstrate this was to compete in international competitions. Consequently it became the ambition of many Filipino artists to be represented in the biennales.” While there are sprinklings of Filipino artists in such exhibitions, then as today, the Philippines has yet to make a heavyweight name for itself in contemporary art as, for example, China has in recent years. This, however, is not simply a matter of art itself. Ledesma and Guerrero, writing of the Philippine participation in the 1962 biennale, astutely observed, ‘‘When the Filipino artists and committee members arrived in Venice, they found that successful participation in an exhibit of this magnitude was not based on artistic merit alone. Money, government support, politicking and an aggressive or promotions campaign counted too.” The international recognition of a country’s artists can really sometimes be as substantial as the budget it provides for it.

(To be continued.)

* * *

The author may be reached at letterstolisa@gmail.com. Her art writings are at http://writelisawrite.blogspot.com.

A little update

2010-05-16T17:10:00.003+08:00

Normally, I simply post my existing writings in this blog or comment on some project in the works. Today, however, I thought I would go into a bit more detail on what's been on my mind, particularly having moved back to the Philippines after living in Australia for two years.

To recap, I graduated just last March from the University of Melbourne with the degree Master of Art Curatorship. My studies were undertaken as a recipient of the Australian Government's Endeavour Postgraduate Award, a merit-based scholarship. A few weeks after receiving my degree, I was given notice that, together with another student, I was on the University of Melbourne's Dean's Honour List, an award given to the top five percent graduating students in their respective courses with a certain minimum grade. I actually wasn't aware that such an award existed but it is nice and certainly encouraging to be academically reaffirmed for my work for the past two years, which has really been my studies.

So that was then and what about now? Well, now that my masteral studies are over, the question I get most often is if I am going back to Australia to work or go somewhere else abroad to find a job. At the moment, I am Manila-based and I intend to work here for the time being - a very conscious decision that is certainly not without its frustrations. I did have the option of staying in Australia but I chose to return home. The great thing about working in the arts in Manila is that there are so many things to do here and that can be done here (theoretically anyway). The difficult thing, however, is being stonewalled by things such as lack of funds, people with lack of vision, lack of financial compensation and age. Personally, it is quite a struggle to be hammered by these things, particularly having lived in Melbourne where the government provides a lot of funding for the arts, progressively having realized the benefits it gives to the state. The art scene there was a lot more professional as well and that of course goes back to the amount of funding an art scene has (whether by the state or through private patronage).

On the age issue, I must comment a little on it - as it is precisely an issue. I do feel it is difficult for me to be taken very seriously at times here in Manila because I am quite young and in person, I look even younger it seems (as I have been told). I would be the first to admit that I have a lot more to learn (I am even considering doing a second master's degree). But I do have problems with people being automatically dismissive of me simply because of my age, particularly when they haven't even read or looked at my work. Age was never an issue in Australia as is the case in most Western countries I believe. And having had at least a couple of incidents here where it was made glaringly apparent to me that my age seemed to be a liability, I can't help but of course be disappointed at certain people's short-sightedness.

Moving on to what I have been up to - Currently, together with my former teacher Boots Herrera, I'm working on an exhibition of modernist/postmodernist Lee Aguinaldo that will be held in the Ateneo Art Gallery at the end of the year as part of the museum's 50th anniversary. I have also been busy shooting and editing Visual Pond's latest project - ARTiculation, a Philippine contemporary art series online which features an artist for each episode (for 10 in a season). Visual Pond, for those who are unfamiliar, is the nonprofit organization I cofounded together with fellow art management graduates Rica Estrada, Tenten Mina and Cheska Tanada. We do projects together in addition to our individual careers.

For our first episode, we shot Mark Salvatus and for the second, we featured Christina Quisimbing Ramilo. I'll post soon separate blog entries with embedded videos but for now, you can simply find the videos in Visual Pond's youtube channel at http://youtube.com/user/visualpond. I am currently editing the third. The series is actually pretty straightforward information, aiming to be a primary and easily accessible source on Philippine contemporary artists.

Asides from what I've mentioned, I am also working on writing more regularly for Star, at least for what space they can give me. The first part of my article ,'The Struggle for Philippine Art - Then and Now', has been released today and I am working on the second part this week for next Monday.

I have also been reading on video art history or rather, histories in looking into seriously furthering my research and writing on video art here. I have 1,500++ pages of readings and this is probably only just the beginning. This is also groundwork into research I will be doing next year on the video art collection of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum as their selected researcher in residence. If you have any books to recommend that I add to my reading list, I would appreciate you firing me off an email to letterstolisa@gmail.com.

And that's all for the moment, folks.

Posthuman Monstrosities, Posthuman Toys

2010-04-26T02:05:00.002+08:00

I slightly adjusted the catalogue text I wrote on Ronald Ventura's works for A Duad in Play, a joint exhibition he had with Francis Ng, to reprint as an article for The Philippine Star. I do this from time to time with catalogue texts I write as this way it gets wider readership.

Please click here to read it. You can also buy a copy of The Philippine Star today.

Dictatorial Whiffs

2010-04-19T00:37:00.005+08:00

The second of two articles I wrote on the National Artist Award controversy. It was published in September last year (direct link to the article in Philippine Star).

Dictatorial Whiffs

The National Artist Award controversy that continues to spin out reminds me of an event in history with similar undertones — art under Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during the Third Reich.

Hitler and the Nazis were probably among the greatest art patrons of the twentieth century. Art under the Third Reich became an intrinsic part of political ideology that was pursued with great rabidity. The degree of Hitler’s interest (he had once aspired to be an artist) in the arts was not only intense but extremely detailed. For the exhibition of “great” German art in 1937, for example, he even personally looked through the over 15,000 submissions and threw out those he didn’t like in a rage.

What is reminiscent of this National Artist Award controversy is that the prerogative of Hitler as fuhrer and state “taste” trumped over those of German art curators at that time. In a bid to reinforce “true” German identity, the Nazis chose to patronize art that was similar to 19th century genre works of German painters. These were figurative, easily recognizable subject matters like showing the German peasant doing work in the fields or the superior Aryan race in assorted aspects of everyday life. It was an art for the masses — something that could be effortlessly understood.

While art for the masses was celebrated by the state and a Nazi newspaper sang “Are they not brothers — the artists and the soldiers?” German art curators on the other hand worked fervently to protect the art of their taste — modern art that had been flourishing in the country since World War I. Modern art was practically an enemy of the state as the Nazis swiftly began to execute a purge of modern works and prohibited artists from making modern art. Many of the modern artists fled Germany as the Nazis escalated in their intolerance. An exhibition of degenerate art was staged in 1937 where they hung modern works alongside art of the mentally ill in what can be seen as childishly poking fun at art they didn’t understand or simply couldn’t appreciate. Then in 1939, in a Berlin fire department exercise, thousands of works were burned as a “final solution” to these “degenerate” pieces.

Many artists and cultural workers of the modern movement from all over Europe fled to the United States as the Nazis spread their reach. Most landed in New York, which, in the aftermath of World War II, became the world’s bastion of modernism and progression, an identity it still champions to this day. As modern art triumphed and its legacy was engraved into the world’s art history, the “great” German art and the “art for the masses” heralded by the Nazis fell into shame and obscurity.

Art’s Elite Nature

Art should never be evaluated by how many people benefited or enjoyed the artist’s work (the argument of Carlo Caparas that he deserves the award more than others based on how many people he hired and how many have watched his movies). The elitist nature of art is an inevitable component of the art world. It is naturally only a few who first begin to appreciate art’s forerunners before it begins to enjoy broad acceptance. The elite here is not about moneyed persons but rather those who lead in recognizing and assigning artistic value. It is by their appreciation — spread through ways like writing, patronage and inclusion in projects — that gradually more people come to appreciate these works as well.

As a specialized field, however, there will always be things that a person outside the art world will not be able to instantly understand or begin to immediately appreciate. Art appreciation takes a fair bit of education or repeated exposure to art at the very least — a very difficult reality in a developing country. Many well-known figures of the art scene will always remain unknown to those with more pressing concerns. Yet, this does not mean that their art is of less substance than those who do art through commercial endeavors, which naturally has a wider reach, or those who spread art for educational purposes. Is this a popularity contest? A charity award? Or an award about the arts?

Dictatorial Whiffs

Artists and cultural workers who have been against the President’s choices have been slapped by their opposition with tags of elitism and anti-GMA sentiments. If being elitist means being able to recognize the value of something in one’s own expertise and trusting the process by which artists become artists by their field’s experts and colleagues, it is the way that the art world operates and should be respected, again, as a field of specialization, rather than criminalized as pure snobbery. One doesn’t become an artist respected, studied and admired by later generations of artists and the public simply by the President’s choice. The complex system which art operates in is suddenly undermined by the President’s whim.

The Palace keeps saying it’s within the President’s legal right to name whom she chooses. Is it legal? I’m not sure but I’m definitely sure it’s not right. The example of Hitler imposing his favored artists on the masses and the art world was a strong enough lesson that these things do not bode well in the long run. Yet, decades later, here is a President who is again not simply meddling but dictating in a cultural affair. In an article in Manila Bulletin last Aug. 26, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita kept reiterating the President’s authoritarian right, the emphasis of defense having shifted from the Honors Committee to the President’s absolute entitlement in the wake of the Supreme Court investigation: “The President is within her authority to make the final decision, especially as to who will be rewarded or who should not be rewarded”; “We believe in the primacy of the President’s authority as the one mandated by the law to be the one to make the final choice”; “The President has the final say on those that should be awarded.” The word “final” is another way of saying that the Palace is not able to adequately satisfy, at least to the art community, its exclusion and inclusions and so, like an embarrassed bully caught with its pants down, it starts throwing its weight around. This seems confirmed by the taunts of the National Commission of Culture and the Arts (NCCA) chair Vilma Labrador, an ardent supporter of NCCA executive director Cecile Guidote-Alvarez around whom, upon being named National Artist for Theater while in office and serving as the Presidential adviser for culture and the arts, much of the controversy abounds. With the Supreme Court looking into the matter, Labrador suddenly declared, as reported in an Inquirer article last Aug. 29, that “The battle is over” — that the proclamation for National Artists was already signed July 6 and that critics could continue to wail all they want about it but that the matter was already a done deal.

This was also likewise declared in an announcement by the Office of the President last Wednesday, stating that the conferment cannot be overturned by the Supreme Court. More alarmingly come reports that National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera, who has been strongly opposing the President’s interference in the current controversy, is being monitored by military intelligence, inquiring and taking photos of his house in Quezon City. One of the spies was caught by village security and was identified by his Armed Forces ID as Corporal Hannival Guerrero.

The Honors Committee as merely an advisory body does not alleviate the dictatorial whiffs surrounding this controversy. It must also be emphasized that the persons in the Honors Committee are not qualified to advise on these matters unless they are in the arts and if they are, they should only be qualified to advise in the field of their specialization. A National Artist for Literature’s support for the nomination for a National Artist for Theater (as other articles reported) does not carry merit. A senator as one of the committee members giving his opinion about the nominations for an art award is also obviously lacking in being able to make an adequate judgment.

When the actual experts qualified to make the decision protest about the judgments of the Honors Committee and the President, some people have the arrogance to say they are simply anti-GMA and that they have their own interests in profiting from their own choices in mind. It needs to be spelled out that it doesn’t matter who the President is, it’s what she’s done. And least from these protesting minds is how they can profit from respecting the choices of the panels of experts who went through several exhausting months of deliberations to come up with their choices — only to have others imposed and one cast aside — all in the name of the “Presidential prerogative.”

The debate on the Presidential prerogative has been present since President Ramos inserted his own awardee and with every insertion thereafter. If there is such a furor now, it is because the blatant interference, the inclusion of four names and the dropping of one, riled up this debate to an astonishing extent that is completely warranted. Admittedly, the art community should have forced a solution to this issue in the first instance rather than waiting for a situation like this to happen to unify their call. Yet, suggesting that the issue is about disliking GMA and describing experts as elitist hacks who don’t recognize the significance of the inserted names’ bodies of work reek of desperation.

Regardless of what happens in the Supreme Court investigation, time, the ultimate arbiter of art, will weigh upon the inserted selections of the President, helped along by those who write the art history books and stage major retrospectives of those worthy of the honor. What is an award and title anyway if it is not respected by those in the field it is supposed to honor and even stains the life work that one has done? The money won’t last and medals are, in reality, simply an accessory. But to have one’s art recognized and appreciated, surpassing death and generations? That’s something to aspire for, with a designation or without one.

National Artist Award: When 'Experts' Weigh In

2010-04-19T00:29:00.006+08:00

Below is the first of two articles I wrote in August of last year when the whole National Artist Award controversy exploded. It still seems timely to post it in my blog at the moment when President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) just last month replaced board members in the National Museum and the Cultural Center of the Philippines shortly before the Philippine Presidential elections take place next month.

Link to the article in the Philippine Star website.

National Artist Award: When 'Experts' Weigh In

Art and film e-groups are a-buzzing about the latest declaration of the National Artist Award. With the tag “dagdag-bawas,” the National Artist Award, supposedly the most eminent award bestowed upon a Filipino artist, is yet again stained by the politics of its selection. As of press time, a symbolic protest, a necrological service for the National Artist Award, was going to be held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

The issue most plaguing the National Artist Award is that it allows the Philippine President to bypass the lengthy selection process done by panels on CCP and NCCA to confer the National Artist Award on a person of his or her choosing. That this option should even exist is absurd. This presidential prerogative needs to be axed for it ridicules the artists the award seeks to honor and all of us who work in the arts community.

To make it seem that the final selections of the president are legitimate, there was a supposed “honors” committee that made nominations (asides from those provided by CCP and NCCA), deliberated and confirmed the selections. Yet, the two questions many of us have been asking are who the people in the honors committee are and exactly what are their art credentials? Is Malacañang ever going to release their names? Or is the President’s office too afraid that once the members of the honors committee are made transparent, the indefensible way names to the Awards were dropped and added will be exposed? If the members of the panel are art experts, they should not fear in immediately releasing the full list and who recommended whom.

The political nature of the award is even made more evident by bestowing it upon Cecile Guidote Alvarez, the current presidential adviser on culture and executive director of the NCCA. An article in another paper cited the Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita as defending the conferment of the title on Alvarez, saying, “She didn’t deliberate on herself. We have the honors committee that does that. It does not disqualify her. She was chosen, and Cecille Guidote has been active in theater even before she got married to (Presidential Adviser on Climate Change and former Senator) Heherson Alvarez. She’s a student of Fr. (James) Reuter. She’s really good.”

The National Artists Award guidelines in September 2007 in the NCCA website says that “NCCA and CCP Board members and consultants and NCCA and CCP officers and staff are automatically disqualified from being nominated.” Yet, as we have seen, the loophole is that one can simply be selected by the President to bypass that nomination process. Alvarez may have built many performing arts organizations but the conferment of the title upon her while she holds office is a blatant conflict of interest. Also, the award for theater is conferred for direction, performance and/or production design. So future articles and statements supposedly defending Alvarez’s conferment should focus on these aspects of her contribution to theater rather than on her founding of programs or organizations.

NCCA chair and Education Undersecretary Vilma Labrador dared to say that critics should not put any “political color” in the award and even managed to insult those in CCP-NCCA who put together their list of recommendations by saying, “Sometimes there are people who simply ignore the credentials or greatness of some persons because of some personal agenda... If there will be another group to look at the credentials, there is a balance, there is validation.” With the amount of e-mails that have been flooding e-groups and the articles in the news these days with howls of protest, it is evident that there isn’t a balance but an obvious disparity. There certainly seems to be no validation either by the arts community for Alvarez or Carlos Caparas, the other recently named National Artist who the arts community is protesting against. And as for the personal agenda Labrador mentions, is the honors committee or the President actually free from this? For surely there was a reason that Ramon Santos was dropped as National Artist for music. Or was it a matter of other people thinking that their expertise trumped those of the panel of experts that endorsed Santos?

Labrador has defended that the current awardees fit the criteria for National Artist. Yet Labrador’s own field of specialization isn’t in the arts at all but in education, which does not qualify her to make such a sweeping statement about who deserves a National Artist Award or not. It illustrates that the clash in this year’s awarding stems from some people obviously thinking they are expert or know enough about the arts to decide or defend the National Artist selections while others, which seems to be many who regularly work in the arts, disagree with their judgment. Becoming an expert in a particular field in the arts is a long, arduous and complicated process. It involves more than Ermita saying Alvarez is “really good.”

I also have to admit that I am quite irritated at the award guidelines as saying, “These achievements are measured in terms of their vision, unusual insight, creativity and imagination, technical proficiency of the highest order in expressing Filipino culture and traditions, history, way of life, and aspirations.” While the awards should be limited to Filipino citizens, it should not be bestowed upon them for their art’s “Filipino identity” but for their art’s excellence, whether this deals with Filipino identity or not. The awards must progressively recognize that art is transnational and not simply a tool for nation-building.

APT 6 Roundtable

2010-02-23T17:20:00.002+08:00

Asia-Pacific Triennial 6 Roundtable organized by Gina Fairley and published by ARTERI, Interactions with Art, Life & Culture

Gina Fairley (GF), Clarissa “Lisa” Chikiamco (LC), Ho Tzu Nyen (HTN), Shooshie Sulaiman (SS)

Part 1

Part 2

New Directions in Art Studies and the Humanities: The Second Philippine Art Studies Conference

2010-02-18T05:37:00.002+08:00

This is rather late for a post given that it's starting in a few hours but perhaps people may want to catch the second day of the conference. New Directions in Art Studies and the Humanities: The Second Philippine Art Studies Conference is taking place today and tomorrow, 18-19 February 2010, at the Tambunting Hall, National Art Gallery, National Museum of the Philippines. Starts bright and early at 9 am!

I'm giving a paper on selected works of Tad Ermitano on Friday morning. I'll post more on that next time.

A few updates on my end:

- Fractions of an Intangible Whole: Philippine Social Realism in the Ateneo Art Gallery, the exhibition I originally curated for the La Trobe University Museum of Art in July 2009, opened in Ateneo Art Gallery's new space on the second floor of the old Rizal Library this 22 January 2010. The show runs until 15 March. It has some added pieces from the permanent collection decided by the AAG team as the space allotted here in Manila was bigger. The works that were on loan - Poklong Anading's Anonymity light boxes and Yason Banal's videos Chop-chopped First Lady and Chop-chopped First Daughter, are still on show.

- I wrote on Ronald Ventura's work for the catalogue of his show in Singapore with Francis Ng. Co-curated by Artesan Gallery + Studio and the Institute of Contemporary Arts at the LASALLE College of the Arts, A Duad in Play opened on 3 February and runs until 3 March 2010. The title of my essay is 'Posthuman Monstrosities, Posthuman Toys.'

- Busy with Visual Pond projects. At the moment, I won't say what we're up to until it's more concrete.

That's it for now. More soon!

Multi Perspective Discussion on Philippine Art on 16 January

2010-01-13T15:50:00.003+08:00

Posting this for those who may be interested in joining us this Saturday.

Multi Perspective Discussion
on Philippine Art

Panelist:
Alex Tan
Lito Zulueta
Lisa Ito
Louie Ojeda
Delan Robillos
Lisa Chikiamco
Rica Estrada
Wire Tuazon
Jose Tence Ruiz
plus more artists

Sambalikhaan Grounds, Asian Institute for Liturgy and Music (AILM)
275 E. Rodriguez Avenue, Quezon City
Saturday January 16, 2010, 2:00pm

For other inquiries, you can also contact Buen Calubayan at 0905.418.0156

'video Christmas tree'

2010-01-04T02:39:00.003+08:00

Please click here to read my first 2010 column article for The Philippine Star in the actual Star website though I have copied and pasted it below.

Here is also a link to a photo of Nam June Paik's TV Garden.

Photo credit of 'video Christmas tree': Jenny Ng.

'video Christmas tree'
by Clarissa Chikiamco

Last week, I was running errands at the Cash & Carry mall in Makati when I found myself stumbling across an “accidental contemporary art.” I borrow the term from artist Mark Salvatus and his ongoing project of the same name. In this project, Salvatus photographs things he encounters in the everyday which are reminiscent of actual contemporary art pieces.

The Cash & Carry accidental contemporary art piece — not a part of Salvatus’ project yet though I have already recommended it to him — is a large Christmas tree bedecked with lights, balls, ribbons and LCD video screens — something that pioneering video artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006) would surely have appreciated. The “video Christmas tree” (as I shall call it) loosely connects to Paik’s “TV Garden” (1974), a large-scale installation which had television monitors scattered amidst live tropical plants. In TV Garden, the flickering monitors, playing Paik and John Godfrey’s video collaboration “Global Groove” (1974), are in seeming sync with its surrounding leafy vegetations. “What is growing here?” may be the main question the artwork asks, not simply of itself but in the then and now still growing culture of screen media and technology. A precursor of sorts, it has been remounted in versions throughout the years in different venues in a culture that is repeatedly finding resonance in its question.

Accidental contemporary art like the “video Christmas tree” also seems to ask some intriguing questions. Set amidst a mall space festooned with red ribbons and balls — red, orange and gold — glowing from a most generous swathing of lights, “video Christmas tree” hangs LCD screens playing cartoons. The questions it seems to beget are “What is Christmas?”, “What is our idea of Christmas?” or “How do we experience Christmas today?” This accidental contemporary art is oddly and aptly evocative of current screen culture. There is, for one, the consumerism involved conveyed to us through screens. Christmas ads are on websites, on television and on giant-screen moving-image billboards that are increasingly pecking the urban landscape. Coveted children’s presents are difficult to untwine from the screen — toys involve popular cartoon characters or are marketed to kids as they watch their favorite shows. Laptops, iPods, mobile phones and video game consoles are the dependable presents for the young that prevalently use technology to communicate, establish social networks, gain social status and engage in leisure activities. Though it isn’t difficult to imagine “video Christmas tree” in a museum against white walls and done on an even bigger scale — which would make quite an impressive installation and, if we are talking about consumerism, would confer it “ultimate value” as a legitimate art object — there is something particularly poignant in seeing “video Christmas tree” in a mall.

There is also to consider at how screens have transformed the holiday experience compared to 15 years ago. Most holiday greetings today are arguably received through the screen: texts sent throughout the holiday period, punching “answer” to pick up a loved one’s call, emailing acquaintances and friends, giving a general greeting as a status in Facebook, Twittering “Merry Christmas,” Skyping with family abroad or monitoring the countdown to the New Year via television coverage. Even meeting up with friends and relatives for the holidays is mediated by screens as emails, texts and calls are exchanged to coordinate the whens and wheres.

Though “video Christmas tree” wasn’t intended to be art — it was designed by the mall managing director Jenny Ng with her in-house team of designers — and it still isn’t art, I can’t help but think of the deeper meanings such an installation conveys. Certainly, the increasing amount of screens we are exposed to made the installation possible and perhaps “natural.” If restaurants decorate their interiors with screens, why not screens on a Christmas tree? Yet, there is a certain uncanniness here upon seeing this strange but marvelous sight. If I connect it to art, it is because art, and contemporary art in particular, allows one to more deeply consider such things. Things in the everyday can suddenly give way to becoming enigmatic and meaning-laden, connected to a broader and at times disparate set of ideas. “Video Christmas tree,” like other accidental contemporary art, may be accidental but this all the more enhances the wonder and delight derived from such surprises. While it may not be art, I have art to thank for trying to grasp sights such as these.

* * *

Cash & Carry is along South Luzon Expressway, Makati. Mark Salvatus’ Accidental Contemporary Art project may be viewed at http://accidentalcontemporaryart.blogspot.com. The author may be emailed at letterstolisa@gmail.com. Her blog of art writings is at http://writelisawrite.blogspot.com.

Fractions of an Intangible Whole in Manila - 22 January 2010 at the Ateneo Art Gallery

2009-12-22T03:02:00.002+08:00

In my rush to post last July, I failed to mention that the exhibition I was inviting everyone to come to was an exhibit I curated. Fractions of an Intangible Whole: Philippine Social Realism at the Ateneo Art Gallery was held at the La Trobe University Art Museum in Melbourne, Australia in July 2009 but I am happy to inform everyone that it will be restaged in a part of the Ateneo Art Gallery's new space (the first floor of the old Rizal Library) this January. If I remember correctly, it's opening 22 January 2010 along with the exhibit of 2008 Ateneo Art Award winner Kawayan de Guia. I would probably post again to confirm but in case I don't, the date is probably right or you can (should) holler at me at my email letterstolisa@gmail.com to confirm.

I think I have at least 2-3 posts more to really get this blog up to date plus I need to post pictures. I'll get there!

In the meantime, I wish you all happy holidays! For those of you who have dropped me a line throughout the year, you have really made it special and I very much appreciate it. If I haven't gotten back to you, I will (you can also nudge in another email to remind me if you like!).

BOXED: The Start of a Conversation

2009-12-21T00:59:00.002+08:00

I am posting here first the PR blurb I wrote for the Boxed exhibit which Rica Estrada and I curated followed by the exhibition notes I wrote for the show.

The exhibit opened last 12 December, Saturday, at the Blanc compound off Shaw Boulevard. If you're planning to catch the show and you haven't been to the Blanc compound before, I suggest you go to the Blanc website and download the map. A lot of people got lost trying to find it amidst the holiday traffic. It may be better to catch it the week after Christmas. The show runs until 2 January 2010.

Boxed: The Start of a Conversation

In 2006, Boxed was conceptualized by artists J. Pacena and Buen Calubayen as a series of exhibitions for artists and the artistically inclined. Each exhibition would gather together those from a wide variety of ages, backgrounds and creative training, showing their art—loosely bounded by dimensions—and prompting reminders on the presence and significance of the artistic community. From the initial exhibition in Big Sky Mind to the hallways of the Cultural Center of the Philippines to the Cubicle Art Gallery show themed with erotica, Boxed is, in the words of Pacena, `the idea, that we can be boxed, in one time and one space in order to connect and create a larger box, the idea of creating a universe and a dialogue in between.'

In the fourth installment of Boxed at Blanc compound curated by Clarissa Chikiamco and Rica Estrada, over forty women artists think, converse and relate their practice with one another. Within a set chain over four groups and starting from thoughts of the curators, each artist must reflect and respond to ideas of the previous artist in the line, documented through dialogue and then enacted in actual production. The dialogue, done through email, SMS, phone or in-person chats, is exhibited along with the art, putting primacy on the stages of art's conceptual development and the ability of artists to discuss and negotiate their practice.

Subtitled The Start of a Conversation, the show begins a dialogue but anticipates its extension beyond the exhibition. Believing that all different kinds of dialogue—direct or indirect, formal or informal—impresses upon and subsequently shifts artistic identities, however subtle, the exhibition challenges the idea that art is made in isolation. Highlighting the importance of artistic networks, the exercise of the show attempts to encourage networks in a system in which artists are able to both verbally and visually communicate their ideas with flexibility to others' artistic practices. Boxed: The Start of a Conversation discloses a normally concealed process as it commences it, acting as an index for the future dialogues it trusts to instigate.

Boxed: The Start of a Conversation opens on Saturday 4PM, December 12, 2009 at Blanc Compound Mandaluyong. Blanc is located at 359 Shaw Boulevard Interior, Addition Hills, Mandaluyong City. For more information, please call or sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph and www.blancartspace. multiply. com. Boxed will run until January 2, 2010.

______________________________

A few comments before you read the exhibition notes.

The write-up for this show was for me very important for this particular exhibit. The show did not turn out as Rica and I had envisioned and I felt it was important to convey our disappointment. And, in what I think is also a change from my usual writing, I wrote the notes in the first person and I'm more straightforward than I usually am and less formal. With a lot to say, I thought it best to just say it straight up.

Despite the show not turning out as I had wanted, what was interesting was that the dialogue that I had wanted to happen did happen between me and a few artists that night and post-opening via email in the egroup we created for the show.

And just to insert a little something on pictures of the exhibit: My pictures of the show at the moment are quite inadequate but I should be getting suitable pictures soon and I will post some here. In the meantime, Trickie Lopa of manilaartblogger.wordpress.com has posted some of the pics she took of the show as well as some of her comments, one of which I responded to in the comments section.

Dialogue doesn't happen in a straight line
by Lisa Chikiamco

When the organizer and cofounder of Boxed, J. Pacena, asked Rica and I to curate this year’s exhibition, I saw it as a good opportunity for artists to practice dialogue, something which I thought was sorely lacking in the Philippine art scene having compared it to my experience studying and working abroad. Modifying J’s original idea, Boxed: The Start of a Conversation had over forty women artists think, converse and relate their practice with one another. Within a set chain over four groups and starting from some thoughts I had emailed, each artist had to reflect and respond to ideas of the previous artist in the line, documented through dialogue and then enacted in actual production. The dialogue, done through email, SMS, phone or in-person chats, is to be exhibited along with the art, putting primacy on the stages of art’s conceptual development and the ability of artists to discuss and negotiate their practice.

Initially, we had wanted there to be only one big chain yet the number of those included in the show—which we had thought would be less or a little over 20—and the time there was to dialogue made this impossible. Due to the number of artists which grew monstrously to over 50 and later whittled to 42 in the day before the exhibition’s opening, we had to divide this into four groups and subdivide them in the case of Group 3 in order for the dialogue to be finished in time. Only a handful in this show are of my and Rica’s selection and due to the lengthy process involved for this show, I will say from the outset that we would have preferred a more intimate number. Yet, admittedly, I also thought it was an interesting exercise as well for us as curators to work beyond our comfort zone and beyond the artists we normally work with.

On the 2nd of September this year, I emailed the following thoughts:

I’ll start off this dialogue by throwing in a few questions on the state of dialogue in the Philippine art scene. Does dialogue between artists, between artists and curators, between artists and the public occur? And how does this dialogue occur?—what are the communication channels by which dialogue is rendered and how is it translated? What are the ways by which the flow and exchange of ideas happen and are evidenced? What are the translations of dialogue—as a seed what does it flower? Ideas, artworks, essays, exhibits, projects? Moreover, do translations ever come to a full stop or like an unending whirl does it continue over time with dialogue having imprinted its trace? And how does a discussion, more often than not a mere wade in the pool, connect to a system of streams that empty out into the ocean?

Also intriguing as well is the connections between dialogue and women. The idea that women converse more, are more inclined to gossip, chit chat and communication, is verified clearly in television programming and popular culture. Yet, in contemporary art, where dialogue and discourse are hot bywords, the close association dialogue has with women cools for women working in the visual arts. Dialogue, which in the arts field is thrown in a very positive and constructive light, suddenly does not have a crossover in being identified with a particular gender which can benefit from it. Perhaps it’s a case of all being equal—where everyone is meant to dialogue whatever their sex without judgment of which of the two has the stronger affinity for discussion.

Reading it recently, I would certainly now like to modify certain words and the delivery though the thoughts would have essentially remained the same. Yet, the dialogue which happened after I sent off these thoughts quite frankly surprised me.

Very few artists overall were able to respond to these thoughts appropriately. Though only the first artists in the groups were supposed to directly respond to this, I had hoped that all the artists might keep what I had said in mind. Disappointingly, some seemed to completely ignore these thoughts at all and the direction I had thought the dialogue would lead to completely changed course. I had introduced the connection between dialogue and women since we had retained J’s original idea of having all women artists in the show. However, as I had written above, my thoughts which they were to respond to were on women dialoguing in the field of contemporary art. By this, and which I would think would certainly not need to be spelled out, I meant women talking about their artistic practice, their artistic identities or issues in the Philippine art scene. My mentioning the stereotype of women conversing was only an introduction to this larger issue on the state of dialogue in the Philippine art scene. If the artists chose to respond to the ‘women’ part, I had thought it would be remarks towards an art institutional setting, like issues of representation. Certainly, I did not intend or foresee it into artists dwelling about love, relationships, sisterhood and stereotypes (which together on display seem to affirm stereotypes rather than negate them) and into some sort of feminist ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ exhibition. As a curator who happens to be female rather than a female who ‘happens’ to be a curator, I will say I am very uncomfortable with this idea and it is certainly not something which I can say I am happy about.

In a sense, Rica and I share some responsibility in this. We should have steered the dialogue back to course when we saw the dialogue evolving that way. We, however, did not always see it evolving that way per se. Despite clear instructions to keep the curators in the loop of their discussion—as simple as cc-ing us in their emails which is how most communicated—many did not do this immediately. Most simply forgot. Yet, this led us for months constantly and frantically trying to find where the dialogue was, who currently held the ‘ball’, what did the others who had already talked discussed and who did we need to follow-up with and give a heads up to. Because of the large number of artists involved and that those last in line could not commence conceptualizing and making their work until the dialogue reached them, ensuring that the chain kept moving along became our first priority rather than us being able to focus on the dialogue that was happening and interjecting in it. Our second priority was in trying to get a copy of the dialogues since this was essential to the exhibition. We wanted not only to put artists through this exercise but to reveal this process to the viewers by exhibiting the said dialogue. This way, people would be able to trace the connections between the artworks and see how ideas are translated into the ‘final product’ placed onto exhibition.

I would like to note, however, that as can be seen in the ‘gaps’ of dialogue in the exhibition, some did not send us the transcript of their dialogue or their thoughts at all. Some sent it after following up and, in what I had originally envisioned as being a ‘straight’ line of dialogue, some wound up backtracking as others went forward and others diverged and others participated then dropped out and others were not sure what was happening. In perhaps what is the strongest message that Rica and I learned from curating this exhibition, dialogue doesn’t happen in a straight line.

Yet, the gaps and the dialogue itself clearly illustrate that most of the artists involved are not used to dialoguing about their practice and I would argue this extends largely into the Philippine art scene as well. If I seem a little harsh on this exhibition, it is because I believe there are lessons to be learned here—for artists and curators and not just those who are a part of the exhibition. For everyone’s benefit, we need to dialogue more. This exhibit has a lot of personal stories involved and, having worked in a collection dealing with works of an extremely sensitive and personal nature, I do firmly believe these certainly have their own worth. These stories and strong responses to womanhood were just not what Rica and I had in mind for this show (which also makes me reflect on curators trying to control artists in structure and outcome among other things).

I do believe it is quite important to develop a discipline of conversing about artistic identities and observations on the Philippine art scene that go beyond simply saying that our local art scene is rapidly growing. Before we are able to properly enact this however, we need to actually pause from the frenzy of doing, doing, doing and really think about it. The point is not to come up with final answers as indeed there are none. We need to ask ourselves and each other questions of serious thought and respond to it with some serious thought. We need to ask, read, research, think, probe, respond, compare, revise and not necessarily in that order (straight lines be damned). It is going to be difficult, complicated and sometimes unpleasant. Yet, the dialogue is completely necessary for artists and curators to grow not with more projects but more in depth with their practice. I may have voiced disappointment with the exhibition but I will also state that I am still glad for the artists and for Rica and I to have undergone this process. I am also delighted in the friendships which seem to have sparked from it and the conversations wherein indeed the artists talked about their artistic identities and tried to find the relationship of these to each other. Perhaps more will come of it. In many ways, the conversation is only just beginning.

Dust Masks and White Ice Cream

2009-12-15T03:41:00.004+08:00

In May of this year, I wrote the exhibition text for Hanna Pettyjohn's exhibition 'The American Sweet' at SLab, Silverlens' gallery for contemporary art.

I was quite happy with how the text came out and Hanna was as well. I wrote about her two years ago for Preview's December 2007 issue ('Full Circle') but I first saw her work in 2006 in her exhibition for the Mag:net ABS gallery (which no longer is running though there are still a number of Mag:net galleries doing extremely well). It made excellent use of the small space and I loved her contemporary use of stoneware clay. It was great to work with her again for this piece and I would love to work with her again for her future endeavors.

No pictures for now, I still need to get permission to post pictures and I have none of my own as the writing and communication for this piece was just done via email while I was abroad. If you want to see pictures of the show, go to the SLab website, click gallery, click view by artist and then click Hanna Pettyjohn.

Dust Masks and White Ice Cream

12 Dec 2006, 14:35. Now this is now. The ground is driest, light and chalky; houses sprawled across this patchy geology, cloned and cold as a fucking ice cream. A large real estate of white paper, whiter than paper. The urban sprawl of unfinished thoughts and unborn ideas.

On endless blue. Endless white, endless consumption. An endless row of cars across a paved flat land, sketching faded outlines of infinitely dense and shifting worlds too huge for words, where higher standards of breathing shield entry of bodily harm, inadvertently filtering your clumsy intimacy. Describing eyes, describing lives.

"What exactly do you think you are? The millions and trillions of thoughts and memories, juxtapositions- even crazy ones like this, you're thinking- that flash through your head and disappear? A sum or remainder of these? Your history?"¹

15 Apr 2007, 15:48. Who knows what lost loves? One second per second.

- Hanna Pettyjohn

Not unlike other Filipino-Americans who journey to the Philippines to learn more about their roots, Hanna Pettyjohn undertook such a passage in reverse. Spending four months in Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas from December 2006 to April 2007, Manila-born and based Pettyjohn got acquainted with America.

With her excursion framed by work at a geotechnical engineering laboratory that she embarked on to support her stay there, Pettyjohn uses the laboratory’s essential accessory as a parallel of her perception and experience of American suburbia. She depicts not only coworkers in dust masks but even her grandfather and cousin, both of whom she had met for the first time, donning these aseptic vizards as well. The concealment of a key area of facial expression ensues into a perceptible blankness of emotion and Pettyjohn places it under a magnifying lens through extremely close headshots painted to large-scale. Like labels in which one would mark slides of samples, Pettyjohn abbreviates the subjects’ names into clinical initials for the titles.

This practice of abbreviation was picked up from the writings of the late David Foster Wallace, whose stories about small-town America accompanied Pettyjohn’s own American journey. His prose mirrored her own impressions and, fittingly, his initials even had equivocal meaning as the town’s airport code. Pettyjohn’s paintings of the town are named simultaneously representing her memories of it and paying tribute to the author she associates with those memories. The scientific, documentary feel to Wallace’s writings spurred Pettyjohn to meticulously record her experiences of America through extensive writing and photographs. Isolating certain fragments from the written collection, Pettyjohn rewrote them and the result—the artist statement and introductory quote—sparked the ideas for the images of the show.

The writing-and-rewriting process which the exhibition sprang from carries the thread of Pettyjohn’s practice. She constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs—in past shows quite literally, smashing old works to pieces to generate new ones. While materially less evident here, the construction-deconstruction-reconstruction practice manifests itself through her writing. The process this time, ostensibly subtler due to the product (text vs. something physical) and not an artwork per se, actually is, as writers know, quite harrowing, mentally taxing and even downright brutal. The artistic regenerative progression is, while unseen, no less difficult nor less demanding.

In what may have been a smoother process, a birdcage from an installation Pettyjohn did for a 2008 group show, where she also did a dust mask-portrait, is carried into this new setting and reworked into a new installation. The previous installation had a small house painted in clouds, conveying the American dream of an unspoiled life, which then rested atop a chicken pillow entrapped in the cage. In its current incarnation, the cage dangles freely from the ceiling with neon text of ‘now this is now’. It hovers above naked white plaster casts of homes forming their own little residential area. Each house the same as the last, the installation edifies the flatness and monotony of everyday America, where everything—and even everyone—seems to be a clone.

For many, this may not be a representation of their own perception and experience of the USA. For Pettyjohn though, there is something more to and about these idyllic dreams. Mundane, repetitive, sanitized, incessant and, ultimately, impossible, The American Sweet is a land where everyone gets to have some ice cream. But the only flavor is vanilla.

Notes

1. Quotation is from David Foster Wallace’s book Oblivion.

Art is like a journal

2009-12-15T03:16:00.002+08:00

I wrote the text for Mark Andy Garcia's second solo exhibition at Blanc in February of this year. I was asked by Jay Amante, the gallery owner of Blanc, to write the text for the exhibition. In a sense, I was quite interested to do so with Garcia approaching art intimately connected with his personal life and using art as a form of therapy. Having worked at the Cunningham Dax Collection, a collection of works of those who've experienced mental illness and/or trauma (one of the largest collections in the world of works of this kind), in Melbourne as a Curatorial Scholarship Student for a year was a very interesting experience for me and one that I was interested in connecting with my practice working in contemporary art. I'm not sure what further directions my experience there will lead to but I am a big believer in mulling over things, letting it fester and bringing it out when 'it's time' whether it be weeks from now or years from now.

Art is like a journal

Art is like a journal, Mark Andy Garcia once said. If it is a journal, the selected works in this exhibition script the startling, tumultuous past year Garcia has had. The unusual succession of events that have unfolded in Garcia’s life within close proximity to one other has placed the artist squarely in an overwhelming test of his disposition. Briefly, the story of this episode of Garcia’s life is this:

Rochelle and Raquel, Garcia’s two younger sisters at nineteen and seventeen years old (both single and still in school), wound up with overlapping unplanned pregnancies. His older brother, Rhyan, got married but, within a month, forlornly had to leave his pregnant wife behind to work in Taiwan for much needed finances. In addition, the kidneys of Garcia’s father stopped functioning and regular (and expensive) dialysis sessions became necessary. And like many mothers who become the family’s resilient pillar in times of crisis, Garcia’s mother has more than dutifully stepped up to her task as the caring, loving wife and mother who sources her strength from places of unplumbed depths.

Now, Garcia, the second of the four children, is amidst and in between all of this.

While seemingly aloof in manner should one meet him in person, Garcia’s composed exterior veil a tempest beneath. The furor and confusion that Garcia rightly feels for all these occurrences is directly seen and felt in these exhibition’s works. The works were each created quickly and unplanned in a torrential flood of feeling – in the need to suddenly discharge these hot flashes of intense emotion and moments of great duress. Grief, anger, despair, sympathy and bewilderment are bared in Garcia’s childlike brash slashing strokes and in the impetuous scribbled phrases found all over his paintings. His selection of damp browns, purples and greens further insinuate the artist’s brooding and foreboding mood.

Focusing on Garcia’s mother are the works Charity, Sorrow, My Mother and She’s Always There. They, in some sense, pay tribute to her vigor, her steadfastness and indeed her anguish as well, as Garcia perceives it. Depicting his brother and sister-in-law, Kuya Rhyan and Ate Raquel centers on Garcia’s brother’s distressed reaction to his sister’s pregnancy news which followed only a day after what had been his joyous wedding. The events of Rochelle and Racquel, the objects of Garcia’s mother’s charity, shadow and dominate most of the show, along with Garcia’s deep loathing towards the men who got his sisters pregnant. One of the men is obviously referred to in Raquel in the Shadow of an Imbecile; the other alluded to in The Brainless Murderer. The men loom in the corner of Under the Watchful Eyes while Garcia’s self-portrait sits on the opposite side holding a double-edged sword, a biblical reference to the word of God. The importance of faith in these events that have cast such a feeling of vulnerability to Garcia, understandably feeling prey to his emotions, is echoed in his Prayer Request of a Weak Man.

The exhibition title ‘Under the Watchful Eyes’, taken from the title of the largest work in the exhibition, originally referred to a divine being overlooking these events and, simultaneously, the judgmental perceptions of others to what had happened. Yet, the title takes new meaning in the recent death of Garcia’s father, who passed away shortly after the works for the show were completed. It perhaps movingly bookends a conclusion in this particular chapter of troubling events in Garcia’s life.

Undeniably, the weight of such severe family circumstances Garcia finds himself in weighs heavily on the works. Who would want to own something filled with so much personal tragedy? Would it be so sadistic to purchase and display such a memento of events that are so obviously deeply painful to the artist?

Yet, if art is like a journal as Garcia says, there is something very precious then about owning what amounts to a page from the artist’s diary and one so specially invested in by the artist. It is rare to find works these days with such a fervent personal connection to actual events in the artist’s life. The impulsive painting process has certainly been a therapeutic one for Garcia, the transference of emotions done through the very physical sensation of daubing here, there, anywhere and everywhere. There is an evident amount of gratification in expelling the hurt, the demons, the confusion and the sadness.

Yet, there are still some few last stages of this progression of healing being completed. The works have entered the realm of the commercial world. They are now exhibited in a gallery – ready to be sold off and shipped to its new proprietors, who will own not only a part of the artist’s experience but, with such inundation of the artist’s inner self, also in a sense a part of his soul. As Garcia lets go of these works and they go into the homes of the appreciative and enlightened, perhaps he may find the cathartic release and the prayed-for strength that he has greatly longed for and that he so much deserves.

Art & Australia Lyndal Jones exhibition review

2009-12-15T01:58:00.004+08:00

I wrote a review of the Lyndal Jones exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) for Art & Australia under Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces' Emerging Writers Program where I was mentored by Lisa Byrne. It appeared in the publication's Summer 2008/2009 edition.

For this exhibition which had a lot of video, I remember spending hours in this exhibit with a number of repeat visits to see the videos in their full duration. Visitors would come and go and I would still be sitting there watching. Even if I suppose a reviewer has a particular responsibility, it makes me think that perhaps the experience we are presenting in our writing is markedly different from what other visitors may experience. It also makes me wonder about the expectations of artists in such exhibitions - do their expectations for 'ordinary' visitors differ from their expectations from art writers and curators? If they expect visitors to stay only for a couple of minutes to watch the works and this visitor is an art writer who writes about the work in a way other than the artists intended, would they argue it is because they didn't stay to watch longer or watch the whole thing? In large exhibitions such as biennales, I would think that video - despite its increasing popularity as medium - is the one that least receives proper attention due to the time demands. We are also so used to watching narrative that even just 10 minutes of non-narrative can be excruciatingly long.

Also on some random non-art related note, in this picture of that was made black and white, I seem to have aged like ten years! I barely recognize myself in all honesty! If you've met me in person, haha, you know what I mean.

I am seriously going to update this blog soon

2009-12-13T12:51:00.002+08:00

I am seriously going to update this blog soon!

I have been mega busy the past few months with the past 5 weeks in particular being completely crazy on so many different levels. It's probably been the most intense 5 weeks of my life but I think I've handled it well so far.

But yes, I'm alive! And damn happy to be alive!

Will update soon :)

Fractions of an Intangible Whole: Philippine Social Realism in the Ateneo Art Gallery

2009-07-07T02:30:00.003+08:00

Fractions of an Intangible Whole: Philippine Social Realism in the Ateneo Art Gallery draws from the strong collection of Philippine social realist works in the 1970s-1980s of the first museum of modern art in the Philippines, the Ateneo Art Gallery. The show looks at how historically significant works become animated with new meaning through the museum and its exhibits which include contemporary art sourced outside the collection.

30 June - 31 July 2009

La Trobe University Art Museum

Glenn College, Bundoora Campus

Victoria, Australia

Curator's Talk: 22 July 2009, Wednesday, 4-6 pm

To be followed by a reception 6-8 pm with Guest Speaker Raul V. Hernandez, Consul General of the Philippines

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

10 July 2009, Friday, 11 am

Dekada '70 Film Screening

Starring Vilma Santos. Directed by Chito S. Rono.

A story of a family caught in the middle of a tumultuous decade. Dekada '70 details a middle class family struggling with new changes that have empowered Filipinos to rise against the oppressive Marcos government. Witnessing the suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, proclamation of Martial Law, bombing of Plaza Miranda, random arrests, radical citizens and political prisoners, Amanda Bartolome (Santos), a mother of five boys, awakens her identity to state her stand as a citizen, mother and as a woman.

17 July 2009, Friday, 11 am

‘New York, London, Paris, Rome, Manila City Jail’ Discussions with David Griggs
David Griggs’ is an Australian artist whose work explores the “darker undercurrents of human
existence to make sense of the uncertain times in which we live”. His most recent show at Green Papaya Arts Projects in Kamuning, Quezon City, Philippines, caps off a four month Asialink residency in Manila, in which he worked with inmates of the Manila City Jail. David will talk about this project as well as his enthusiasm and extensive travels around southeast Asia, in particular the Philippines and the impact this has had on his work.

20 July 2009, Monday, 2 pm

Gallery Readings, Creative Writers from Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines

Rofel G. Brion is a professor of interdisciplinary studies, literature and creative writing. His poems have been published in three volumes, with his fi rst book winning the Philippine National Book Award. He has been a fellow at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, the University of Iowa International Writing Program, and the Berlin International Literature Festival.

Exie Abola teaches literature and writing and is a prize-winning writer of short stories and essays. He writes an occasional column for the art and lifestyle sections of The Philippine Star and is currently working on his first book, a collection of literary essays.

Cyan Abad-Jugo has a master’s in Children’s Literature at Simmons College, Boston, and is currently pursuing a PhD in English Studies: Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines. Her first book, Father and Daughter: The Figures of Our Speech, is a joint project with her father, the poet Gémino H. Abad (Anvil 1996). She has two collections of short fiction: Sweet Summer and Other Stories (UP Press 2004) and Leaf and Shadow: Stories About Some Friendly Creatures (Anvil 2008). She teaches Introduction to Literature, Western Literature, and Fiction Writing and writes a fantasy series for Mango Jam, a comics digest for girls.

LUMA La Trobe University Museum of Art
Glenn College, Bundoora Campus
La Trobe University, Victoria, 3086
Exhibitions Hours: Mon – Fri 10am – 5pm
Telephone: + 61 3 9479 2111
Website: latrobe.edu/artmuseum

All Lectures and film screenings at Glenn College Lecture Theatre, Bundoora Campus. Readings in the Gallery. Free Entry. Bookings Required.

A Circa Revisited

2009-03-10T04:09:00.006+08:00

The following is the text I wrote for A Circa Revisited, solo exhibition of Ranelle "Rain" Dial, at Mag:net Gallery Katipunan from 25 October to 13 November 2008. More pictures at Mag:net's website.

A Circa Revisited

In an extension from her previous exhibition Withering, Rain Dial continues her appraisal on a weakening communication system in her current solo show. A Circa Revisited expands on the theme of the old-fashioned post through its portrayals of the men in custody of this conventional form of message delivery.

Prior to phone, mobile phone and email technologies, the postman was the essential component in the transference of letters, announcements and other information. His physical presence and equally physically demanding tasks embodied the perseverance and necessity of human interaction, initiating the transgression of boundaries and underscoring the premium placed in communication exchange. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night (as the saying goes) could prevent the performance of this duty. The postman, in spite of any impediment thrown his way, would continue to relay crucial communication and serve as the critical point of contact between friends, family, communities and nations.

A Circa Revisited reflects on this role’s diminishing value. Like apparitions from a bygone era, Dial’s postmen are evidently dated and derived from images in the early 1900’s. They are shown in various locations amidst the everyday and extraordinary nature of their tasks: delivering via bicycle during the holidays, saving mails from a ruined city, reading an unknown addressee amidst a war or simply in the act of retrieving letters (from the commonplace mailbox to the secret tree hole for lovers’ written whispers). Postmen, denoted in Dial’s choice of somber neutral colors, have always been largely unnoticed characters and yet, their imperceptibility is bound to intensify. In the technology propulsion of the twenty-first century, those from point A to point B have effortless access to direct person-to-person contact. In the process, the middle man—the mailman—has been cut away.

Hinting of this are two of Dial’s paintings where postmen are not depicted. Like demoralized and abandoned assemblages, the mailboxes cluster together in perpetual wait for some content. Their hollow cavities echo the absence of what was once the constant occurrence of being filled, of holding the personal and historical narratives which have shaped the present that shuns it. It is an absence indicative of the other absence affixed to it, becoming traces of the human hand which once was a fixture there. A Circa Revisited gives encomium to those who’ve enabled a previously primary mode of communication. Poised to recede in giving way to progression, postmen, through this exhibition, are given their due presence.