NCCA rep to 56th Venice Biennale is UP prof’s entry

MANILA, Philippines -  The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) recently announced the selection of Patrick Flores’ curatorial proposal titled “Tie A String Around the World” as the official Philippine participation at the 56th Venice Art Biennale 2015.

This marks the country’s return to the contemporary art world’s first and oldest biennale after a 50-year hiatus.

Flores’ curatorial concept is a poetic and political reflection on the history of world making, the links between geography and politics, and the notions of nation, territory and archipelago. It foregrounds the extensities of the Philippines, a foil perhaps to the more aggressive instincts of expansion around us – in the past and in “present passing.”

Tie A String Around the World revolves around Manuel Conde’s 1950 film “Genghis Khan,” co-written and designed by Carlos Francisco, screened at the Museum of Modern Art and at the Venice Film Festival in 1952. The film tells the story of the young Genghis Khan, his passage into the life of a warrior. It ends with the conqueror, perched on a mountain, casting his magisterial gaze over his dominion and promising his woman to “tie a string around the world” and lay it at her feet.

The newly restored film will be exhibited at the Pavilion alongside contemporary art projects of inter-media artist Jose Tence Ruiz and filmmaker Mariano Montelibano III.

Flores is professor at the University of the Philippines Department of Art Studies and curator of the Vargas Museum. He is adjunct curator of the National Art Gallery, Singapore, a member of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Council, and a guest scholar of the Getty Research Institute in 2014.

The Venice Art Biennale will open on May 9 and run until Nov. 22, 2015.