Art in a box, just like in the real virtual world

I would have to say, there were very inspiring moments.

Rachael Turner was engaging, her insights interesting, as was the story of Madlab (Manchester Digital Laboratory). Always say yes, she said, and in a whisper added, within reason. Then there were couple Robert and Lorraine Sylianteng who have given their property in Escolta a new lease on life by turning it into a creative hub, and with it may have just given the former major business district a chance at redemption. I wish I could have heard more from Ee Soon Wei of Art Printing Works-Malaysia, his journey was similar to that of the Sylianteng couple's. But there was not enough time.

For three days, creative communities united at the Arete of Ateneo de Manila. The first two days were filled to the brim with presentations, testimonials, pats on the back, success stories, offers of courses and workshops to make creative communities, hubs to become success stories, all in PechaKucha format - quantized storytelling, 20 slides, and presenters spend a maximum of 20 seconds on each slide and they have no control over the way the story should flow, Microsoft's Powerpoint's programmed to automatically advance to the next slide after 20 seconds. Your whole story, or pitch, whatever, in six minutes and forty seconds. Tops.

The PechaKucha website describes the format as the "Art of Concise Presentations," It originated in Tokyo in early 2000's, they say, "as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public." Apparently, it's totally new for everyone who went up on stage last weekend, not one was able to properly tell their story within the "rules" of the format, not even the representative of a reputable international business school who was supposed to show us how it's done by supposedly doing a presentation on how to tell your story, or give a pitch, in 5 minutes in, well, 5 minutes. Just like everyone, the first minute or so went well, and just like everyone else, he rushed through the rest of his story like a runner going down a steep incline. And even then, he breached his own time limit. That's the thing about the PechaKucha format, both the presenter and the audience, at least in last weekend's gathering, tended to focus on whether the presentation can make the deadline.

I was terrible at it. I did rehearse my presentation, and I had trouble spending 20 seconds on a slide where I only needed five, and spend 20 seconds on a slide that I needed 30 to properly tell the story of. Some slides I somehow missed a couple of lines and finished ahead of the 20 seconds, others a thought came to me midway which had me going over the limit. Between speaking to the floor director and  the tech guy to cut me a bit of slack and chill and focusing on the story I thought was worth telling, there was hardly any real time left to tell the story. What? I know, right. 

I understand that time had to be managed properly to make the most out of the eight hours per day, tell the storyteller they have six minutes or so to tell the story, but don't tell them how to divide those 6 minutes or so into strictly equal segments. In a conference for creative communities and artists, it's counter intuitive.

Each batch of presentations was followed by an open forum. The conference gathered creative minds, people, in one place, then placed a wall between them. Don't speak, text. 160 characters max. There's no microphone in the middle aisle where members of the audience could walk up to to ask questions, but there's a website you log on to where you can type in your questions. You can identify yourself or post your question or reaction anonymously. Most did post their questions and reactions anonymously.

Just like in the real virtual world.

I heard the phrase business model a lot. And gentrification, the idea of which most of the presenters seem to dislike very much. 

There were a lot of calls to avoid, prevent, even rally against gentrification. The calls were made against a backdrop of a blinding high definition LED wall, overflowing coffee, business school pitches on the importance of a proper business model, and testimonials that mostly equated economic gains with success, even good art, etc. What? I know right. 

The main proponent of the gathering was the British Council, and apparently Thames Business School. I had trouble reconciling the need for creative ideas to flow freely, sincerely, authentically on the one hand, and the pitches to place creative communities in pre-fabricated templates called business models on the other. I acknowledge the need for a way to make artists make rent, but not at the cost of being forced to color inside the lines, or think within a box. 

If artists and artisans and creative hubs and communities must be boxed, packaged in a way that would not only enable them to be economically viable and sustainable but at the same time help and allow them to thrive and flourish creatively, then the least we can do is not to come forward with a pre-fabricated box. Sit down and have coffee with the artists, understand their individual processes, the stories they want to tell and why they want to tell them, understand their dynamics and how those dynamics resulted in a community, a hub, what made them gravitate towards each other, then create that box, that business model, according to those unique processes, dynamics, circumstances, personal, individual aspirations, raisons d'etre. 

Or, well, I could be wrong about all this. 

I missed the tour of selected creative hubs around the metro on the third day. Limited slots only. 

Installation just outside Arete at the Ateneo de Manila, brightly colored flags on poles that flowed freely in the wind, each distinct piece of cloth reacting uniquely to its environment and together forming ever changing forms and shapes. I learned so much looking at this installation. 

Ibag'iw, the Barrel Man 2.0, being cultural and the great reveal

Interestingly, a colleague referred representatives of I Juander, a tv magazine show on GMA 7, who are doing a feature on the barrel man, to me, the referral coming at a time when I recently proposed to have this iconic Baguio souvenir as the main theme for installation art pieces for the upcoming Ibag'iw - the 2nd Baguio Creative Festival on November 16-24, 2019.

The object of my and GMA 7's current fascination and curiosity is a woodcarving depicting a man inside a barrel. The great reveal happens when the barrel is lifted - a rather over-proportioned penis springs out. It's been a regular offering at souvenir shops in Baguio for decades and according to the tv show's crew, a professor they interviewed for the feature didn't mince words when asked about the the lack of written material as to its origins - because it's irrelevant.

Several blogs and other sites online though tell the story of how in the year 2000 National Artist for Film Kidlat Tahimik "agreed to pose and be photographed" as a live version of this "irrelevant" novelty item to purportedly make a statement about Baguio's colonial past. Several also quoted Kidlat's theory, or rather his discovery after conducting a study in the 90's that the barrel man was actually a "protest statement of sorts," "made to play a prank on Americans who made Baguio City their alternative government center in the 1900s, and in so doing displaced the Ibalois who originally lived in the area.

Then there was the exhibit in Chicago in 2008, "Beyond the Barrel Man," In one write up about the event, the author asked "Does the barrel man have a long cultural history, or is it last-century adaption of Pilipino woodworking skills?"

The woodcarving industry here is very much a market-driven one. See how much life-sized carvings of Avengers characters have proliferated? Root chairs and tables have recently given way to the current fad of Japanese-inspired minimalist designs. One of the more popular key chain designs  in Maharlika today is of a fish made of quilted brightly colored pieces of leather. There may be a more romantic explanation for the presence of wooden dolphins on the shelves of souvenir shops in Asin Road, but more than two decades ago, an exporter gave a woodcarving shop a design depicting a dolphin and ordered thousands of them with the words, "Made in the Bahamas," painted at the base.

I, and many share this sentiment, find the penis ashtrays offensive and crass, but there on the front shelves they are.

Later this year, the city will be holding the 2nd Baguio Creative Festival, of which I was invited to direct the staging. The festival is in celebration of Baguio as a creative city, both de facto and according to UNESCO.  In one of the brainstorming sessions, I offered an original song I composed for use as the festival's theme. I played it in that meeting, and one of the comments was that it was not "cultural" enough. Whatever that means. And not "indigenous" enough. Should we scrap the planned evening of country music then?

Hold on. Must we see only what we want to see and ignore the penises and dolphins? Must culture be stagnant? Shouldn't it be, nay, isn't it fluid, ever developing, ever changing, taking the shape the landscape dictates where seeds are constantly planted some of which die a natural death while others germinate, take root, continue to grow and become undeniable aspects of it? Should we force ourselves to believe that Baguio culture is and must only be about aspects of it that are indigenous, or those that agree with the palates of aesthetes and intellectuals?

All this is making me reconsider what the upcoming creative festival should all be about. I proposed that theme for the installation art pieces because the concept offer a wide range of creative possibilities. After all, we're all barrel men and women, I think. What matters is the great reveal when those barrels are lifted, that's what I am very curious and excited to see... and that the base says not "Made in the Bahamas" but created by and in Baguio.

Or, Ibag'iw. 

"Sa libingan ng maliit, ang malaki'y may libangan"

A small boat carrying Filipino fishermen was rammed by a much bigger Chinese-owned boat. And as the former started sinking, the later fled and left the fishermen for dead.

A mere "maritime incident," the president said, and "maliit na incident lang," as recent senatorial elections topnotcher Cynthia Villar echoed.

In another time and place, perhaps it could've been. But not today. Not in the time when Chinese-owned businesses catering exclusively to Chinese citizens a lot of whom are working in the country illegally some in Chinese loan funded government projects are sprouting all over. Not in the time when the present administration has willingly shelved our legal victory in an international tribunal and has all but formally ceded our sovereignty over our seas and islands.

Certainly not in the time of Duterte making threats, albeit empty, to go to war against Canada when their waste ended up in our shores. And that threat came immediately.

And after days of silence, the president finally said something. Are we surprised that his statement and that of the Chinese government's sounded alike? There wasn't even much paraphrasing done. Duterte's statement almost sounded like an echo. Much like Senator Villar's.

The Inquirer reported today that Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said, "the UNCLOS does not mandate the rescue of distressed mariners in international waters if they will pose a security threat to their rescuers."

The much smaller Vietnamese vessel certainly did not see any security threat when they saw the sinking fishing boat and came to rescue the Filipino fishermen.

"Ganito ring araw nang agawan ka ng laya...," Amado V. Hernandez wrote decades ago. "Sa libingan ng maliit, ang malaki'y may libangan."