Integrating the Local and the Contemporary

GROUP 3 – ALCARAZ
What is defined as “local” and how can it be used for
contemporary arts?
The term “local” refers to incorporated materials that are easily accessible from
the immediate environment of the artist. These materials are not just integrated
to tangible objects but also into performance arts, rituals, etc.

 Santa Rosa City – Coconuts

 Cabuyao City – Mixed crops
 Ilocos Province – Tabungaw
However, the “local” has something to do not only with what is homebound and
accessible but also with what is fluid and ever-changing. The term “local” can
pertain to the place (locality) that the artist is residing in or the community
that the artist wants to feature in his/her art.

Diokno Pasilan
 A neo-ethnic music-visual/performance artist and one-time director from Negros
 Raised in Palawan Island, Philippines
 Art prod includes: painting, installation, video, performance, and music
 He received a Diploma of Fine Arts from the Western Australian School of Art,
Design, and Media in 2002
For Pasilan, local involves various places such as Baguio, Bicol, Palawan and
Victoria, Western Australia (where he resettled). For him, local can mean
interacting and immersing with the host community. His artworks include:
3rd Bagasbas Beach International Environmental
Art Festival
 Held on Bagasbas Beach Front, Camarines
Norte in the Bicol Region in 2010
 Pasilan paints his body green and
thrusts himself like a human anchor unto a
bamboo structure as a statement to promote
environmental awareness.
 Bamboo was used as it is the local
material in Bagasbas communities.
S/V Locomote (2014)
 During Pasilan’s stay in Australia, he
picks up on found objects that trigger
a channel of association back to a
personal history founded on mobility and
a community of construction and
senescence in the Philippine islands.
 International maritime prefix “S/V”
stands for “sailing vessel” while
“locomote” adds to the essence of all boats – that they are made to proceed and
eventually, to return.

Digital Tagalog
Another work which used bamboo as a basic material is Digital Tagalog, a
collaboration between Lani Maestro and Poklong Anading who are known for creating
multi-sensory environments.
Some information about the artists:
Lani Maestro o Currently resides in France,
o Filipino-canadian artist one of Philippine art’s most
o Left Manila for Canada in the respected migrants.
early 1980s to pursue graduate
Poklong Anading
studies in art.
o Two-time Ateneo Art Awards
winner.
o Artwork ranges from media,
installation to sound and video
 Digital Tagalog used bamboo to construct physical
nodes and create sounds. The sounds were inspired of
digitized audio files of National Artist for Music Jose
Maceda.
It was shown in Mo Gallery in 2012. The work was
highly interactive. The artists encouraged visitors to
be the creators themselves. The visitors were given a
chance to produce the bamboo-made music themselves while
musician-DJs overlay the digitized sound.

Agnes Locsin
 Received the Gawad Tanglaw ng Lahi (2014) considered as one of the most
progressive choreographers in the country.
 Davao based choreographer who used the techniques of modern dance to
reinterpret a component of the Moriones Holy Week Festival of Marinduque.
What is “The Moriones?”
 narrates a story of Longino’s
conversion to Christianity upon healing
of his blindess by the dying Jesus.
 Performed in France (as Ballet
Philippines’s entry to the Recontres
Festival Du Danse) by male dancers moving
“Serra Pelada” by Philip Glass.
 The dance reintrerprets the story
through costumes and movements not
associated with classical ballet and folk
dances.

Lucban Assembly / System Irrigation Project

 Done during the annual mid-May Pahiyas festival (May 14, 2015-June 11, 2015)
 Organized by artists of Project Space Pilipinas and their guest artists
 Curated by writers called DiscLab
 Theme: Pamumuhunan (Waiting for a Capital)
 Six Fields: Systems of Irrigation, PAGPAG (Unlearning), Waiting Sheds
Cooperative Study Program, Open Air Screening, Tracing Lucban and Archive
 Multiple Platforms: Exhibitions, performances, open air screenings, discussions
 Purpose: to reflect on politics; to represent practices of knowledge through
artistic language and curational devices; to highlight the relationship of
working with the capital
 Project Space Pilipinas gallery, which De Chavez (main director) has used as
a workshop, now houses artists who have availed themselves of PSP residency,
including those from South Korea, Germany, Malaysia and Indonesia.

What is the Octopus Installation?

Andi Ramdani, an Indonesian, who availed himself of residency to PSP Gallery,
created the octopus installation as part of his residency program. It relates to
the Pahiyas festival as it is composed of bamboo sticks, the local material from
agricultural towns like Lucban.

The Project Space and DiscLab’s artist-initiated project provides alternative

support systems, as they rely on the local community for facilitating production and
distribution of art. Rather, they work independently of state and private businesses.
They also include audiences through interactive galleries and artworks as part of the
creative process.

Local and Traditional

 Integrating the “old school” events like the Pahiyas fiesta and web platforms
illustrate how the local and traditional can converge to generate new ideas and
forms of communication in both local and cyber spaces. Through the convergence,
artists have a more flexible and dispersed means of communicating to each other and
to the public. Other can also actively participate for the betterment of the art
through these communication channels and thus be creative users rather than being
just “end-users.”

We can also note the shift from one space to another of the artworks. Note
the transformation of The Moriones from the private spaces of Boac, Marinduque to
the proscenium stage in France and Cultural Center of the Philippines. This is also
observed in the shift from personal listening devices to shared platforms of Digital
Tagalog.

Ang Post Office

“Local” can also refer to language, staging and techniques (e.g., adaptation
and translation of foreign materials).

 “Ang Post Office” is by playwright Rody Vera.

 Adapted from a play for children by the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore called
“The Post Office” from 1910.
 First staged at the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) Center.
 About a dying Indian boy coming to know of the world through the people he
encounters in the course of a day.
 Restaged at The Xavier Stage (TXS), Xavier University, Cagayan de Oro.
 Local culture references integrated: characters selling taho and sampaguita,
music from Kilyawan Children’s Choir, Ellen Ramos’s digital animation and
utilization of a spartan bamboo set among others.

Fugtong: The Black Dog

 Directed by Rey Angelo Aurelio.
 staged by Aanak di Kabiligan (Children of the
Mountains) and organized through the
efforts of the Cordillera Green Network.
 revolves around the story about a family
ostracized for keeping a black dog commonly
perceived as bringing bad omens
 can be interpreted as being all about how
the different is seen as threatening or
dangerous
 Performed In multiple languages such as
Lalinga, Kankaney, Ilocano, and Ibalol.

Bakata: Battle of the Street Poets

 Also directed by Rey Angelo Aurello.
 Staged at the Tiu Theater in May 2015.
 Features Smokey Mountain-based youths rapping, dancing and acting
 Played by informal settler communities struggling to deal with problems such
as unsustained education opportunities, unemployed or underemployed parents,
and lack of secure housing
 Working with youths who are facing this reality and immersing himself with
the actual environment are the artist’s ways of creatively responding to the
situation.

Limen (2014)
  Commissioned project performed in
France
 Produced by Lani Maestro
 Performed in a space known as the Bata
Compound (was primarily an industrial site)
 Maestro decided to build a see though
bridge that poetically took people out to a
liminal point, as the title suggests
 Limen was meant to metaphorically allow
the visitor’s body to fuse or extend toward
the outlying green space visible through the tunnel structure that did not
have walls, nor clear beginning or end points
 The bridge was suspended from a low height.

The Talaandig
• mostly concentrated in the northern and western part of the province of
Bukidnon
• The local knowledge of the Talaandig people was derived from oral history and
traditions such as religious rituals, dances, songs and music, epic
traditions, folktales, games, handicrafts, and customary mediation.
Saudi Ahmad
• Muslim artist
• would rather paint joyful
occasions of the Tausug and other
Muslim tribes in watercolor than
join the political debates about
the Bangsamoro identity.
• His first exhibit was at the
Sultana Hotel on Pilar Street and
the first painting he sold, “The
Judgment Day”, was bought by a
retired military general.
• He was first into surrealism when
he started painting but he has
since then developed his own unique strokes which he has dubbed
“Saudism.”

Luis Yee Jr.

 a Filipino artist known for his large-scale and site-specific art
installations, which reflect a deep awareness of ecology and environmental
issues.
 He was born in the island of Agusan del Norte.
 Trained as a sculptor
 Junyee has pioneered the use of materials readily available from nature.

Kolown
 A network of group and individual artists
who concealed their identities
 Features elusive street art
 Based from Cebu
 Street or graffiti artists’ works function
“to question, refunction and contest
prevailing norms and ideologies, and to
create new meanings, experiences,
understandings, relationships and
situations.

Labaw Donggon
  By Brenda Fajardo
 This Hinilawod epic tells the story of the exploits of the three demi god
brothers, Labaw Donggon, Humadapnon and Dumalapdap of Panay. The original
form of the epic would take three days to perform, thus making It one of the
longest epics in the world

Kapaniualan
 The Kapaniualan installation located in CCP’s small gallery
 The room is painted all-white and the ground is covered in dry leaves
 Large sized fiber glass seeds are scattered,

Qiyamah
• A film by Teng Mangansakan
• Also won Best Cinematography
• Before handing the award, a member of the jury explained they unanimously
decided to award the Grand Jury Prize to both Qiyamah and Qwerty.

Agbalbalitok
 Directed by Fredie Balanag in 2014
 Agbalbalitok means “the gold prospector”
 "Agbalbalitok" was shot in Sitio Luneta, Benguet. An old and abandoned large-
scale mining pit of Benguet Corporation
 Sitio Luneta now is a refuge for small scale miners and 140 families. The film
is for Sitio Luneta, for its people and the environment

War Is A Tender Thing

 Retells the blood-soaked story of war-torn Southern Philippines.
 Portrayed as a locus of unbridgeable conflicts between and among different
cultures living side by side
 This documentary gently unravels the war as an endless attempt at survival
and adaptation of the Southern Philippine citizens.

Finally, what is “local?”

 The term “local” is dynamic, fluid, and constantly changing. It can be
integrated in various media: dance, music, visual, digital and electronic
arts. As illustrated by the lesson, the term “local” can refer to accessible
and abundant materials in the community, the actual space where the art is
installed, the local community that the artist features, the hometowns or
adopted homes to which artists have settled in, language and adaption, etc.
 We also have learned that artists no longer just work alone in his/her studio;
instead, we have researchers, community worker and even active audiences who
use “local” materials and techniques that fuse with the established, and
dynamic present.