Art changes the world

It turned out that Kidlat Tahimik’s film Memories of Overdevelopment Redux…, which has been 33 years in the making and had its Asian premiere at the Singapore Art Museum’s 8Q venue on Oct. 26, didn’t clock in at exactly 33 minutes. That was an error in the brochure notes.

It actually screened two minutes short of two hours. Kidlat briefly introed the off-and-on effort as still a work-in-progress, then marched up front anew at the end of the screening clad in an academic robe and awarded himself a Hollywood University diploma.  A vintage performance it was as he wielded a bamboo-and-wood camera and ungarbed himself down to the traditional Cordillera g-string, while repeating tongue in cheek the mantra of “indie genius” as a take on “indigenous.” Then he started a beat on a gangsa and pranced around, culminating in his laud of film collaborators, including his son Kawayan de Guia, who played the central role in the recently added footage, and finally, the most important person in the audience, his 96-year-old mother who had joined kith and kin to attend Singapore’s Art Biennale 2013.

It was fun to relive earlier footage shot in the early 1980s, with old Baguio friends essaying roles such as Pigafetta et al. Katrina de Guia, Wig Tysmans and Laida Lim got to reprise themselves over three decades later; not so Dave Baradas who had played Lapulapu, and “extras” Gerry Gerena and Mitos Benitez.

A day earlier, the Cordillera contingent had also partied in the large SAM gallery occupied by their expansive variety of art as curated by Kawayan. There, too, the gangsas were beaten and danced with, with National Artist BenCab and Kidlat a.k.a. Eric de Guia leading the mini-cañao. Peggy Bose, Arnel Agawin, Pat Joffe, Silvana Diaz and Fred Aquilizan were among the familiar faces in attendance. 

In my Biennale review last week, I had also mistakenly credited the diaphanous photo negatives of tattooed highland folks pasted on SAM’s second-level glass windows as Kawayan’s. They are by Ruel Bimuyag, his contribution to the art collective’s collaborative display, entitled “Dinuras: Fathoming Fangod” — billed as “Sounds & Photo-Documentation.” Other standouts in the AX(IS) Art Project assemblage for additional mention are Carlo Villafuerte’s “Wag-wag Wonderland” (Fabric & Vinyl Mat) and Kabunyan de Guia’s “The Halsema Mosaik.”

Two other Filipino art collectives participating in the exciting Biennale that stays up in various venues all around Singapore till February next year are the Talaandig Artists of Bukidnon and Siete Pesos from Cagayan de Oro.

On SAM @ 8Q’s fourth level may be found “Memories of the Peoples of the Earth: The Talaandig Revolution” — billed as a “soil painting… rendered in hues and shades extracted from 14 types of clay found in the indigenous Talaandig people’s  ancestral territory of Songco in Bukidnon privince, Mindanao.” Ten Talaandig artists collaborated on this work.

At the National Museum of Singapore is Siete Pesos’ “2243: Moving Forward” — a hybrid vehicle patterned after the local “motorela” whose patent number when it was registered as an invention in 1964 starts the artwork’s title. An elongated edition of the motorized tricycle, the motorela remains a popular public transport at P7.00 a ride. The one in display is refurbished with a banca with life jackets, pop-up cards and video — as it “seeks to be a catalyst for healing after the devastation Cagayan de Oro experienced during typhoon Sendong in 2011.”

Other SouthEast Asian art collectives and artists whose works caught my eye include an installation of hybrid furniture wrapped in yellow tape and laid out on a long walkway on SAM’s second level. It’s titled “Sa-tan-ni (station)” — a collaboration among five Thai artists and architects. Their project is said to act “as a bridge between what is perceived as art space and non-art space.”

On the third level is the Japanese group TeamLab’s “Peace Can Be Realized Even Without Order” — an impressive interactive digital installation featuring cut-out figures. Depending on how a viewer navigates the space through the 3-D diorama, the figures interact with one another while reacting to the viewer’s presence — all by way of motion sensors that create “a symphony of sound and movement.”

Nguyen Oanh Phi Phi’s “Specula” is another installation at SAM that invites one to walk through a tunnel-like corridor where Vietnamese lacquer has been exquisitely applied on an epoxy and fiber glass composite with iron frame.

Then there’s Indonesian artist Nasirun’s installation “Between Worlds” — featuring pyramidal tiers arrayed with glass bottles and beakers of various sizes and shapes, some illuminated, each one containing small leather puppets of the wayang tradition.

On the front lawn of the National Museum is Indonesian Eko Prawoto’s “Wormhole” — three tall tepee-like structures of bamboo that invite viewers to come in and weave through within.

Oh, so many more exemplars of contemporary SouthEast Asian art manifest the embarrassment of riches that is Art Biennale 2013 — with most apparently proceeding from a conceptual and cerebral approach to creative expression. 

Four days weren’t enough to go through each of the art spaces. But of the non-installations that served as exceptions, the one I would most remember with Pinoy pride is Leslie de Chavez’s large oil on canvas titled “Detritus.” Such skill in figurative painting, and genius in selection of figure types to depict “corruption, consumerism, spiritual decay, environmental degradation, poverty and excess” — surely our questionable hallmarks of the hour.

At the far end of the Pinoy’s creative spectrum is Tad Ermitaño’s “Bell” at the ADM Gallery (The Gallery of Nanyang Technological University’s School of Arts Media and Design), part of a new media show titled Immaterial Frontiers, a parallel event among many complementing the Biennale.

A large white cylinder hangs in mid-air. You duck under the wall and through a gap to find yourself enveloped in a bright red interior. When you touch the walls, you hear a low, ringing sound.

Ermitaño explains it oh-so-scientifically: “My sound installation ‘Bell’ revisits the principle of transduction — the process of converting one type of energy into another — as a field of sonic exploration. It abandons the use of prefabricated speakers, instead surrounding the audience with a curved wall of metal 10 feet in diameter, suspended from the ceiling and vibrated by electromagnets driven by ordinary house current. Depending on the country, this will cause the bell to vibrate at 50 or 60 Hz. The vibrations ripple, bounce, and interfere, both within the wall and in the air enclosed by the sheet. ‘Bell’ — a title that recalls both the musical object and the inventor of the speaker — imagines an alternate reality where the speaker is not a transparent container of sonic content, but an instrument of architectural proportions.”

It can be a meditative or spiritual experience. Since “Bell” is a massive mechanical and physical object, harmonic overtones spontaneously arise in it. In Ermitaño’s words, these color the sound “as a violin’s wooden body colors the vibrations of the strings. In this way, an industrial standard is used to make a kind of room-sized, industrial prayer-wheel. Touching the walls causes the waves to interfere, causing the sound to wobble and shiver.”

An Indian woman described the sound as “Om” and said she could hear chanting in the drones. Oh wow. What has Tad wrought? Art. Art that changes the world.