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.
