[presented during DLSU 5th
Art Congress, February 2012, Taft Ave., Manila]
Project Glocal is to set sail with an arsenal of
ideas that are open for debate and questioning:
For Project Glocal, art project is defined
as a group of activities that aims to encourage discussion for and of the
arts. It does not necessarily aim to
produce a festival of art or to celebrify
artists. Instead, it will produce activities where art can be subjected to
investigation under a particular curatorial theme.
As the curatorial theme, the idea of glocal is to
be problematized. Tentatively, glocal is appraised to mean
locating the local in the global and identifying the global in the local.
Instead of calling Project Glocal international,
it is classified as a cross cultural multi locale project. Emphasis on the ‘nation’ is avoided, which is
another topic of debate altogether. By common usage, cross cultural emphasizes
more the intersection of cultures which may also happen within a nation and
multi locale which emphasizes the diversity of origin more than the alienity of origin.
Project Glocal uses contemporary to mean
the ‘now’. Simply it is a chronological
category and not necessarily a philosophical one. Preference is on the young and actively
exhibiting artist.
Multimedia art is used in Project Glocal
to mean art that uses any possible media that the artists may choose to
employ.
What is
Project Glocal?
Therefore, Project Glocal Manila is a cross-cultural multi-locale
project involving contemporary multimedia art.
The proponents of Project Glocal (including the curator), are
individuals, experimenting on their work vis-à-vis the theme, self vis-à-vis
other artist, and their own art vis-à-vis the local art audience. The idea is for the curator to observe,
converse, debate and exhibit around 29 “city” artists from Bangkok, HongKong,
Manila and Singapore, in answering the following problems: Is there glocal (in the art)? What then is glocal? And how glocal are
we?
Why these four cities?
Without labels, one could barely tell which photo came from which
place. Too much relations. The feeling
of relation can all be charged to the invasion of multinational companies. This
is true. But to be more accurate, one could also choose to believe that this is
all because of lived lives, where imposed political boundaries can be and have
been blurred by information highways, by access to transportation and by the
ability of human to evolve. As Eric Swyngedouw (1997) claims:
“[The process of
global integrations has reached its azimuth in the contemporary urban
environment.]”[1]
Project Glocal is a conversation.
It is a social experiment that is focused on exhibiting the “local” and
the “other local” (instead of the foreign)—the staging, pairing/grouping,
reacting and learning.
Why hold Project Glocal?
Glocal is a concept introduced to me while attending a gathering
of art managers in University of London late 2009. While there, aside from
rhetoric, the word did not have a real meaning.
Not until my residency in Singapore where my curatorial ‘spotting skill’
was put to a real test.
It is no secret that Pinoy artists are well patronized in
Singapore. Without looking at labels, I
thought all I saw are Pinoy art. But actually there were Singaporeans, Thais,
HongKong, Mainland Chinese, Indonesians, etc. Curatorial spotting skill for Pinoy
art graded fair to average, not even good.
Concluding that there must be more than what meets the eye, I embarked
on a research.
Initially the intention was to create an exhibit that would
explore the similarities on works of Filipino modernists and Singaporean-Chinese
masters. However, as the research
progresses, the gaps of information became wider. The earlier hypothesis is
proving to be true and at some level literal—there is more than what meets the
eye—hence, the move to work with artists who are alive; so they maybe able to
explain themselves or collaborate on exploring the idea; for who knows the work
best than the artist. [2]
From identifying the ‘why’ or the ‘what’ of their works’ likeness,
the operative word for Project Glocal becomes ‘to engage’—to engage the
artists, to engage the audience, to engage the art. The main reason being, that
they have to engage in conversations to find out how related are we or even if
we are actually related beyond the pictures.
How
glocal? Art under glocaloscope
This mid-project report, now being presented at DLSU Arts
Congress, aims to share to a wider public, two talking points from the agora
that is Project Glocal.
Let’s gaze global
Talking point 1: Exhibition
themes
CBD (Central Business District)
Central Business District
on a physical/literal level is usually represented as a clean-clear line of skyscrapers.
For all participating cities in Project Glocal, one cannot instantly tell,
without text inscriptions, which CBD is represented in which artwork. As an
abstract concept, in Project Glocal, CBD was defined as a state where we make
things work; a place, occasion or location where money is made. In terms of
culture, CBD is a little city.
Hang-out
The second theme is that
of ‘hang-out.’ This subject varies from images of spaces or activities where we
are when we are not working or when we are not home. It is a space, occasion or activity where (as
cliché goes) ‘let our hair down’ or where we show off.
Traffic
The third theme is that of
traffic. For Manila, traffic means
automobiles stuck along EDSA or elsewhere.
For this Project, we defined traffic as how we move while when we choose
to move. Representation varies from the act of moving, the intention of moving,
our concept of space when we are mobile, how we move around the city or how the
city moves around us.
Home
The forth theme is
tricky. Home is a project on its
own. For this project, we are reading
home as a concept, space or occasion where we hang our umbrellas or move
barefoot. Home is where we are most
vulnerable. It is where we find comfort at the end of the day. It is where we
supposedly feel the safest or entitled, and up to some level, enlightened.
Side street
The fifth theme, side
streets, is focused on the idea of secrets.
These are things, actions, concepts that we bring along with us on our
daily affairs in the city. Those that we
either intentionally do not show or fail to show; either it is something that
we do not realize or rather not show. It
could be those that we fear, those that anger us, something far greater or far
grander, and those that confuse us.
Now, let’s gaze local
Talking point 2: On ‘dayo,’
‘pakikisama’ and the question of contemporary
Dayo
More often after spending
some in a place, individuals tend to adapt, to get more comfortable and to have
somewhat a sense of home or being at home.
But as it was shared by a lot of participants in Project Glocal small
talks, society has its own way of recognizing who belongs and who doesn’t, who
is dayo as opposed to taga-rito. One is dayo
if she originated from somewhere else, which is actually recognized as the root
of her being iba (not like the rest).
Translating to art,
audience say an art is dayo if the
artist is dayo, regardless if the art
looks, speaks and converses like taga-rito. At the same time, art is taga-rito, even if it does not anyway look, speak or converse like taga-rito. For example, an artist can
paint like Mark Justiniani, but if the artist is from
Bangkok, the work is still dayo. On
the other hand, even if a Filipino artist paints like Salvador Dali, her work
is considered Pinoy. Hence, the
confusion or total eradication of the veracity and value of spotting skill of
curators; instead, the emphasis is on the connection of the work to its
source—the artist.
Pakikisama
Pakikisama is one of the domains of Filipino core value under the category
of ibang tao (translated as outsider
as opposed to hindi ibang tao or not
outsider). Borrowed from Virgilio
Enriquez’s Sikolohiyang Pilipino (1975),
the theory implies that a person (a Filipino), act according to or against,
with intentions to belong in a group. In this case therefore, the origin of a
person is outside.
When the process of pakikisama is completed (consciously,
subconsciously or unconsciously), the ibang
tao becomes hindi ibang tao (but
not necessarily not dayo anymore, connecting
this from the previous discussion). For example an Amerikano who tries to eat
with spoon and fork instead of fork and knife is nakikisama. This is where
the popular youngish expression “para ka
namang others” come from.
Translating to art, when
do we say that an artist or his art is nakikisama.
An artist-curator, who was part of the small talks, made an interesting
point. He said “in the art, we are nakikisama if you create what is uso.”
To further illustrate, let us go back to what has happened in the early
to mid-1990s. During this time, the
prevalent style or school of art (especially in UP) was called “conceptual
art”.
For others it was deemed
as intelligent art, for other others it was deemed as unintelligible art, for
other others outside the art circle, there was already a question if it really
is art. But despite the confusion,
questioning and on one end celebrity, a good number of artists follow suit,
writers wrote about them, galleries exhibited them, some even collected them.
Patronage is one form of pakikisama.
For Project Glocal, the
question was left hanging: to whom are the Project Glocal artists’ nakikisama?
Has dayo and pakikisama
anything to do with the question of contemporary? If we are to believe Latour
(1993) that:
“(...) the
alliances social groups or classes forge, over a certain spatial scale will
shape the conditions of appropriation and control over place and have decisive
influence over relative socio-spatial power positions.”[3]
Then, we could propose that aside from being a chronological
category, “contemporary” is a social position. It is the choice positioning of
allied forces to influence.
During the Project Glocal
small talk, it was actually proposed that the category ‘contemporary’ in the
arts could be a manifestation of aligning forces, of pakikisama, either to mimic the dayo
or to contest being classified as dayo.
In this case therefore, contemporary or contemporarity
of art/artist could be a form of pakikisama
of a dayo or towards a dayo.
How
glocal are we?
Conversations about, for and in Project
Glocal has yet to find a path to conclusion, if there would be any.
The curator, artists and a handful of art
enthusiasts who are engaged in Project Glocal’s small talks continue to offer
so many issues to be considered which makes the conversation more complex as
much as it is now more interesting. Project
Glocal is not designed to provide answers that are to become part of the grand
narratives of the great art history instead it enables us to explore systems of
gazing, thinking and creating. Viewing
art under the gaze of glocaloscope can be compared to an agora, a market place
where philosophy and salt are sold side by side.
We are as glocal as we allow
ourselves to be un-alone but independent.
We are as glocal as we allow ourselves to be out there, with a compass
that always points to where we came from but not necessarily where we are going.
[1]
From Erik Swyngedouw (1997) ‘The Specter of the Phoenix—Reflections on the
contemporary urban condition’ in Bosma K., Helliga H. (eds.) Mastering the City I, Netherlands
Architecture Institute, Rotterdam/EFL Publications, The Hague/Distributed Art
Publishers, New York, p104-121, as cited in Erik Swyngedouw and Maria Kaika
(2003) The Making of ‘Glocal’ Urban
Modernities: Exploring the Cracks in the Mirror’, City: Analysis of urban
trends, culture, theory, policy, action 7(1): 5-21.
[2]
The present folio
[3]
From B. Latour (1993) We have never Been Modern (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf),
p.34.
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