Load na Dito sent 4 questions via e-mail/messenger to artists working and living in the Philippines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Norberto Roldan
Jason Dy, SJ
Irma Lacorte
Imelda Cajipe Endaya
Lena Cobangbang
Jose Tence Ruiz
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Norberto Roldan
Image courtesy of Norberto Roldan
1. What was the first thought that occurred to your mind when you woke up this morning?
Grateful to be able to spend another day. Grateful to be quarantined with four people who help make life good for me despite this pandemic. Grateful for being in a much better situation than most people coping with the lockdown. But then, I can’t avoid thinking about the health of my loved ones in distant places, and about the painful void left by loved ones who recently perished from the virus.
2. How have you been coping with the situation in past several weeks?
As Green Papaya is winding down its projects, the office keeps itself busy with the last stages of archiving and figuring out our exit in May 2021. We are also working on two VIVA ExCon publications: the VIVA ExCon Capiz 2018 Catalogue and the VIVA ExCon 1990-2016 Community Archives Project. We commemorated Papaya’s 20 years last May 5. So, we also took the opportunity to run a poster campaign on social media sharing our views and concerns at the time of Pandemic. The campaign was produced by Papaya Office whose members have been working from homes. Perhaps, one of the few things I’ve done to help me come to terms with this difficult reality was to write a very personal essay which I contributed to the publication Traffic.
3. Is the current situation affecting your practice and how?
Considering that my art practice requires carpentry, and regular trips to hardware stores and thrift shops around Kamuning, I have not done anything in the studio since lockdown was imposed last March 16. On the other hand, I’ve been doing some writings for Green Papaya’s archive which I probably couldn’t give time to if I were busy in the studio. In between writing, I’ve been reading and doing research for future projects.
4. What’s your dream and hope for the future?
I see myself relocated again in the Visayas after May 2021. It will be a quieter life with my kids and grandchildren who I seldom see. I hope the world changes, as I see it changing for me, for the better. The most important thing for me now is for people to learn from this pandemic and see the real values in life. It may take a while to narrow the gap between the 1% and the 99% but collapsing the barriers to achieve a more humane balance has been long overdue.
Image courtesy of Norberto Roldan
Notes on images:
I have been working on mock-up studies for my installation "Walking from Xiamen and Looking at the Blue Sea” (by Cao Cao 155-220) for my upcoming solo exhibition hopefully before the end of this year. It's about claiming the West Philippine Sea through the use of language translations. It comprises 14 textile works embroidered with an ancient Chinese poem translated to English and Filipino. I found these used Chinese blankets in an ukay-ukay store in Roxas while working for VIVA ExCon Capiz in 2018. I am also looking at the possibility of installing the work in a village fishing port in Capiz and hold a dialogue and an indigenous sea ritual with local fishermen.
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Load na Dito sent 4 questions via e-mail/messenger to artists working and living in the Philippines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Photos taken by Ro Atilano, SJ
1. What was the first thought that occurred to your mind when you woke up this morning?
After my morning praise and quiet meditation, I thought of the rare tropical plants and flowers I would be collecting for the online mass of Radyo Katipunan 87.9. During this pandemic, I have been arranging flowers, plants, weeds, and tree branches to be installed on the altar table to enliven the liturgy since the Easter Vigil in the time of Enhanced Community Quarantine. Each day, I explore the garden of the Jesuit Residence and the grounds of Ateneo de Manila to scout for possible flora to be included in the floral arrangement.
Today, I’m particularly interested in arranging unusual tropical plants like the sea anemone-like, pinkish-red blooms of the bromeliads, the yellow-brown beehive ginger sprouts that have been growing inside an abandoned styrofoam icebox, and the hairy, curled up fresh leaves of the large anotong (mountain tree fern). Though these plants were introduced in the campus as ornamental plants as part of the university and residential landscaping programs, it’s interesting to observe how human intervention could positively impact and transform a tract of land filled with cogon grasses during the post-war times into a green campus with mini-forests, varied flowering trees, vegetable plots, diverse flora and several birds inhabitants subsisting as an ecosystem. Now, I’m harvesting the fruits of the interaction between human settlement and nature, and offering them back to the divine maker through humble ikebana-inspired floral arrangements.
2. How have you been coping with the situation in past several weeks?
During my online mass homily at Radyo Katipunan 97.8 last March 21, I admitted my difficulty of preaching in these troubled times as I was also troubled myself. I felt helpless in this time of Covid 19 pandemic. This difficulty was compounded when I received distress calls from people in the apostolate area or some communities I have engaged with in my previous art projects. How can I help them in this time of lockdown?
In the earlier weeks of the lockdown, I was heavily involved in garden maintenance like sweeping the leaves in the driveway and watering plants. Our Jesuit community has been doing regular household chores. I also occasionally helped out in cleaning the refectory area. These household chores along with assisting in the morning online masses, watching local and international news regarding COVID19 updates, browsing through my Facebook page, checking emails, collecting materials for mixed-media collages, reading articles on the status of art in the time of the pandemic, and preparing some online guidelines for my classes at the Ateneo Fine Arts became my work-mode routine.
I work on these various day-to-day tasks to keep myself busy. This has been a personal default mode in terms of coping mechanisms. In this way, there is a sense of being in control. This routine provided me with a sense of normalcy though it took a toll on my health. I developed acute appendicitis. I was apprehensive to go to the hospital because of the real threat of being exposed to the virus. But the overnight abdominal pain and the need for surgery outweighed the risk. I psyched myself that I needed to recover fast to lessen the exposure to the virus. After three days of confinement, I was released and stayed in a quarantine facility here inside the university campus for fourteen days.
The quarantine days helped me to cope better. Quieting myself in meditation became an important aspect of my post-appendectomy days. This silence provided me space for self-care and a sense of surrender and entrustment. Instead of trying to be in control of the situation by becoming like a busy bee, I was humbled that I'm helpless with the pandemic. I needed to admit that I could not respond directly to the distress call of my friends in the community. But in these times, I was invited to be more present to people by listening to their concerns and troubles even online, to continually pray for people, to surrender to God's providence and healing, to seek help from other people especially from private agencies who could help the communities in need. I was consoled that through the generosity of the benefactors and volunteers of the Tanging Yaman Foundation, Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan, Ateneo de Manila University, and Raising Green, some communities I collaborated in some art projects received relief goods. Art had also taken a more contemplative route during quarantine days like the Purple Cube project. The built-in shelf/table in my room at the quarantine facility became a creative space where I ate my meals, celebrated private liturgy, and created assemblage as well as mini-installation works. Now, active and contemplative modes of my daily routine are now helpful personal mechanisms to cope with this pandemic.
3. Is the current situation affecting your practice and how?
The lockdown has disrupted many things but also showed some possibilities. An art project of installing enclosed terraria in a derelict, unused space in Escolta with Micro Galleries was canceled because of the worldwide crisis. The exhibit was part of Micro Galleries' micro-festival in March 2020 in partnership with 98b Collaboratory. The memorial service of the late artist Ben-Hur Villanueva in Baguio was aborted. But the eulogy I’ve written and prepared was published online by Art Plus Magazine. In-classroom sessions were suspended but learning sessions continued at the ADMU Fine Arts Department. I had difficulty shifting to an online mode of instruction. Live masses with communities were called off. Now, I help out in the online masses at Radyo Katipunan 97.8 and set up floral arrangements each day.
In terms of my creative practice, several surprising opportunities have opened up. Though the project with Micro Galleries was canceled, the ten enclosed terrariums were included in the online fund-raising exhibition “Raising Green” curated by Lena Cobangbang and co-organized by art collector Migs Camacho. Though not commercially viable, these works are continually cared for and placed in a suitable environment here in my room for their respective ecosystems to thrive. Some terrariums that were left opened, their soil easily dried up because of excessive evaporation brought by the hot temperature this summer. A fellow Jesuit commented that somehow these bottled terrariums represented the nCovid 19 lockdown situation were enclosed environs worked to lessen the virus transmission and the non-observance of the quarantine guidelines engenders the family and community. These terrariums are also suggestive of the empathetic creative and curatorial practice needed in our art community especially in this pandemic as an important mode of engagement for the art ecosystem not just to survive but more so to thrive. So now, I continue this module of planting terrariums in enclosed ecosystems. for their respective ecosystems to thrive.
I don’t have a proper studio but working with plants and flowers has expanded and deepened my interest in nature as organic materials in my own creative practice. The garden in the Jesuit Residence and the campus in the Ateneo de Manila have become some sort of studio, or perhaps, an eco-field laboratory. Like the traditions of the land artists in England and the ikebana masters of Japan, arranging flowers and plants into words, floral offerings, or botanical collages make me more sensitive to nature’s rhythm of life—seeds sprout, plants grow, flowers bloom, fruits rot, and leaves fall. As we learn from nature, human beings are not determined by nature’s laws. With creativity, intelligence, and freedom, human beings can positively impact the environment. The same is true with human greed, indifference, and abuse that destroy nature. Hopefully, we decide on the better option of caring for the earth and transform it to sustain all of life.
4. What’s your dream and hope for the future?
In these uncertain times due to the pandemic, it’s difficult to plan ahead for the future. Part of coping is living one day at a time. Yet, as a faculty of Ateneo Fine Art Department, I’m training to develop and facilitate online learning on Art Appreciation and on Art and Community. The learning curve is steep. I hope I can manage this new mode of teaching and learning.
The challenge for the future is how to adapt to the new normal. What kind of new normal for the art ecosystem in terms of production, exhibition, educational programs, circulation, and distribution? Will the new normal be more scaled-down, online, studio-based, domestic rather than itinerant, socially responsive, and empathetic?
A way to reflect on this new normal is to revisit the place of art in society and how it teaches us to see better. This reflection involves a looking back, a looking in, and a looking through. Looking back is like retrieving a scrapbook with handwritten entries, newspaper clippings, research notes, sketches, drawing studies, photographs, ephemera, among others. In leafing through the pages of the scrapbook, one learns about the past, history, artist’s response to the crisis, factors contributing to major shifts in art tendencies, cultural shifts, faults, excesses, extremities, and missed opportunities. Here, art history, archival materials, sketchbooks, a stack of films, unedited photographs, storage rooms, and visiting a studio of a retired and senior artist are helpful guideposts to understand the stories and tendencies of the past. Looking in is an act of looking for what is being reflected in the glass mirror. One may see an image represented by the artist of the society one currently experiences. In the represented reality, one questions the representation, the represented reality, and one’s response to what is real. One’s views on the present situation are also being challenged. In a way, art becomes a mirror in order for us to see better, to expose hidden operations, to confront ourselves, and to think deeply about our respective creative practices. Reading art critical writings, asking difficult questions, engaging in online conversations with artist-peers, situating art in the broader socio-political and social culture, being updated with local art initiatives, having personal musings about art, participating in artist’s call, visiting virtual art museums, sustaining art practices, listening to an online interview of significant cultural advocate, among others are ways of looking in to explore responsive modes of art engagement. Lastly, looking through is like looking out through one’s window to see what’s out there or to hear a call from the outside. Here, one explores possibilities, imagines possible futures, creates several scenarios, and proposes alternatives. Some helpful activities for looking through: registering to an allied course with the arts, supporting artist-initiated programs, checking out new art initiatives, exploring VRs, finding new modes of creative expressions, designing online platforms, forging new linkages, finding new platforms of art distribution, exhibition, consumption, and education. Maybe through this exercise of looking back, looking in, and looking through, we can be helped in discerning a new normal for art ecology.
Image courtesy of Jason Dy, SJ
AM+DG 2020 / Jason Dy, SJ Towards a Sustainable Ecosystem (Ecosystem Series After Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube, Martin Creed’s Work No. 960, and gardener David Latimer’s terrarium that was last watered in 1971] Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are the main processes of the enclosed ecosystem for each terrarium.A set of three terraria
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4 QUESTIONS: Irma Lacorte
Load na Dito sent 4 questions via e-mail/messenger to artists working and living in the Philippines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Image courtesy of Irma Lacorte
1. What was the first thought that occurred to your mind when you woke up this morning?
May sinimulan akong maliit at napaka-simpleng project. Iniisip ko kahapon pa kung puwede ko na ba itong ipamigay ngayon. Ito ang punto ng project, ipamigay. Hindi ko na muna sasabihin kung ano. Hindi ito art, wala itong malalim na dahilan.
Mayroon din ilang series (art na ang mga ito) akong pinagpapalit-palit bigyan ng oras kada linggo simula noong April. Sa paggising araw-araw, pumipili ako kung alin sa mga ito ang haharapin ko.
Pero madalas naaagaw ang oras ko ng paglutang-lutang lang ng pag-iisip. May conscious effort na hindi i-process ang mga nangyayari.
2. How have you been coping with the situation in past several weeks?
Hindi ko gaanong hinaharap kasi ayaw ko. Medyo gumagawa ng plano pero hindi detalyado, mas general direction lang. Parang walang saysay sa ngayon kasi ang laki, lawak at lalim ng dadating na pagbabago.
Noong lumipat dito sa Dumaguete, ang dami kong pina-simple sa buhay. Sa nangyari ngayon, kailangang gawin na mas simple pa.
6 months ago, nakahanap kami ng tirahan na may kaunting bakuran. Sinimulang magtanim pagkalipat na pagkalipat. Nakakatuwa ang harapan ng bahay kasi nakaharap sa East. Ang naka-block lang sa tanawin ay isang malaking puno ng balete. Masayang manood ng pagsikat ng araw, ng buwan, lalo na ang mag-star gazing sa gabi kasi walang street lights. Minsan sa umaga nagpapa-ikot-ikot ang maraming layang-layang sa loob ng bakuran! Barriotic level ang tinitirahan ngayon. Totally cut off sa signal ng telepono at internet ang bahay kaya nakakatakas ako.
3. Is the current situation affecting your practice and how?
Mas maraming oras gumawa. Tapos biglang susulpot sa isip ang tanong, saan ko ito dadalhin? Pero, sige na lang, tuloy-tuloy lang. Nakapag-inventory ng mga art materials, ng mga art books, nabulatlat ang mga notebooks na sinulatan ng mga inaakala kong “bright ideas” for the moment. Ang sunod na tanong, gagawin ko ba itong lahat? Sige na rin lang.
4. What’s your dream and hope for the future?
Na maging makatarungan ang lahat ng lipunan. Panaginip ‘yan, ‘di ba ang sabi ay “we were doomed from the start”?
Image courtesy of Irma Lacorte
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4 QUESTIONS: Imelda Cajipe Endaya
Load na Dito sent 4 questions via e-mail/messenger to artists working and living in the Philippines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A Dry Garden COVID, 2020
Image courtesy of Imedla Cajipe Endaya
1. What was the first thought that occurred to your mind when you woke up this morning?
Nightmare! Last night this authoritarian government shut down the country's biggest media network. A nightmare over many nightmares of the past four years. A repeat of martial law of four decades ago, dark days are over-dwelling upon us. I certainly have no loyalty to oligarchs. But this unjust move has resulted in loss of mass jobs, infringement of freedom of expression and loss of a major communication facility efficiently fighting this pandemic. This is nightmare over nightmares where our politicians have allowed China to destroy much our biodiversity, amidst the POGOs and incursions on our county's sovereignty over our land, water and air. And now the Wuhan virus is inflicted on all of humanity. Sobra na!
2. How have you been coping with the situation in past several weeks?
When the lock-down was declared, I felt anxious about dying alone and being ground to instant ashes. Now a month and a half after, I am grateful I am alive and well, but I grieve over a handful of people I know who passed the way I pictured my anxiety. Dystopian present and apocalyptic future this! But, we all must resist every prophecy of doom!
Doing what I have long been doing and labeled a social realist, I have actually long pacified my anger. I have coped well emotionally and spiritually. It's all about faith. And faith that fate is in God's eternal mercy.
My gardening and my art-making keep me sane. In my hardy garden, I can't feed many, but I have enough to feed my household and share spices, veggies, healing leaves and tea with friends and workers in the neighborhood. And in my art, I continue to face the challenge to nourish the soul and inspire to action.
3. Is the current situation affecting your practice and how?
Yes in more ways than I thought.
As I play with textures and brush colors here and there I would normally mull current sociopolitical issues. But this time I looked for escape from anxiety. Thus I focused and finished a happy family portrait requested two years ago by my niece. That done, I am now ready to face this COVID19, not only as a health issue, but also the politics of it. Well, artistically at least.
On gallery exhibitions:
My major exhibit at the CCP in September was canceled; our team still has to strategize how this can materialize in 2021. A collaborative print project in progress is protracted until the print workshop reopens.
On livelihood:
I am normally under the radar of the art market. One or two purchases of my work a year are oasis to survive on, but now these are in limbo, too. I also write and do art for publication but the book project is paused.
In truth, I have been on habitual lock-down even before this ECQ. Because of the bad traffic situation, I've organized my goings-out to once or biweekly. This is boon to my studio practice.
On displacement of medium and materials:
I have long maintained that physical labor with one's hands on craft is necessary for humanity to survive. Digital technology is a good thing and I am fortunate to live long enough for this ,and use it to enhance our art. But alas! Will material culture be totally taken over by the dictatorship of virtual reality. I am not ready for this, so I shout”HELP!”
4. What’s your dream and hope for the future?
I've been taking up this question very personally in my paintings. In 1982, among others, I painted about a mother's fear of doomsday brought about by nuclear destruction in “May Bukas Pa Inay.” Last year I tackled a grandmother's desperation over climate crisis and did “Ang Bukas ay Ngayon Na.” My generation of baby boomers, having made its successes and failures is fading away. But there's still productive time for us to rectify what we can. The future literally belongs to my grandchildren. I know that born from love, they are born into this world for a purpose. So I choose love. And I choose hope. Let hope and agape love prevail! Creation will continue with better human beings co-creating!
Image courtesy of Imelda Cajipe Endaya
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4 QUESTIONS: Lena Cobangbang
Load na Dito sent 4 questions via e-mail/messenger to artists working and living in the Philippines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Horror, 2020
Image courtesy of Lena Cobangbang
1. What was the first thought that occurred to your mind when you woke up this morning?
I said a short prayer. I tried to remember if I had a dream that night. I’m trying to figure out also how many days are we in already in this lockdown. I told myself not to open FB that early as the news about the unjustly and unprovoked killing of an ex –military yesterday was still fresh. A chat group was discussing about another abuse of power by cops. I feel dismayed again, annoyed and angry, but hoping the day would be productive. Trying to make a mental list of what I need to do for the day, then falling into the routine of chores and work.
2. How have you been coping with the situation in past several weeks?
It had been 41 days, and then it was on the news that it had been extended to 22 days more. I have a routine of waking up at 6am, letting out the dogs in front of our house, doing some physical exercise, then if it’s garbage collection day, I’d disinfect our gate and immediate environment, wash the dogs, have breakfast, shower, and start on working on updates on the Raising green fundraiser until 5pm, then dinner at 6, answer some correspondences, then shower then watch or read a book at eight pm, sleep at 10 or depends if what I’m reading or watching is boring or interesting. My life has been more a routine these days. I don’t know if that’s coping. I guess so. Sometimes it bores me, sometimes I just want to sleep or be lazy the whole day, to try to gather my thoughts, or organize them and just write or sketch them or just watch movies the whole day.
3. Is the current situation affecting your practice and how?
This whole thing has me worried more. I’ve been told by a friend that I should quit worrying sometimes. But I cant help it, with what’s happening politically, CCP always being mentioned as a collateral for loans, my friends discussing conspiracy theories. Embyerna to the max talaga. Yung mga ganitong usapan kasi parang mas tolerable pag kasama mo sila at nag-iinuman, kahit papano nakakabawas tension. So yung pag-aalala dumodoble dahil walang alak haha. One important component for me when going to shows/exhibits is this factor ng kamustahan, with just being online parang kulang, you don’t see the nuances in facial expression and gesture, yung kulitan, and just being outside or away from your home na ramdam mo yung umuuwing lasing or may hang over. I kinda miss that.
The effect on my practice however, as curator, I have to think of ways how to organize stuff, and to present an exhibit. To do something online is a challenge as it will be my first time to do so. Mahirap, masaya, kapana-panabik, ubos pasensya minsan pero masaya rin. It opened up possibilities for curatorial/art projects. Sabagay, dati ko pa naman naisip na gumawa ng exhibits beyond the usual gallery platform like publications, etc. As artist naman, I thought I’d be able start working on commissions and other experiments I’d like to do kaso di ako nakapag uwi ng materials from our studio, plus my time is tied with organizing stuff right now. Parang mas marami akong gawa kumpara nung hindi lockdown. Nakakafrustrate din yung pagkakapos sa oras lagi, so parang dumagdag na naman yung backlog ko for my personal projects too.
Pero dapat walang excuse not to make anything, at the same time, the pressure to make something, or to be compelled to be productive makes the lockdown more inhibiting. An important aspect of the process of creating, like walking has been taken out. How to think of land, (since most of my works are about that or), site or place, it becomes more abstract when you don’t feel the viscerality of geography, being landlocked. Maybe because I have not really sat down and pondered on it during this period. I may just concentrate on my lucid dreaming practice.
4. What’s your dream and hope for the future?
To not feel any fear. But impossible, fear will always be there. I hope that fear wont be the driving force of anything that we do. It dawned on me one night the gravity of the situation we are in. I have been putting off that feeling for very long, and that one night after a month or so in this lockdown that I cried it all out. Before being up to any challenge of what this situation may offer, one must learn to accept and strategize within this given circumstance. To hope for things to change, to hope for a better kinder world, it’s always there, everybody probably wishes the same things too. I hope for hope to be palpable. This is a time to think about life – I go back again to Gauguin’s What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? I wish I knew. In January, we opened a show that was premised on that existential query that may as well have been a query of the age/era we are now entering, marked by a volcano eruption and now a pandemic. The hope was blazing then . I said before “We will go where the light would lead us, we will go where it’s warm. A burning world it might be. “ I say now, (quoting from Twin Peaks) :
Through the darkness of future's past,
The magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds...
"Fire... walk with me."
Image courtesy of Lena Cobangbang
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4 QUESTIONS: Jose Tence Ruiz
Load na Dito sent 4 questions via e-mail/messenger to artists working and living in the Philippines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Photo by Brian Sergio (2016)
1. What was the first thought that occurred to your mind when you woke up this morning?
Honestly, I keep getting disappointed at myself for waking up so late: opened my eyes sometime around 7:47 am, then got out of bed by 9:16. One, I am 64, so a slower me is unfolding (which I still do not like at all). Secondly, the Covid isolation has take a lot of outside pressure, outside interaction from my planning of the day, so that I slip into this slower inertia, which my A type personality is hating, but sometimes having to painfully accept. It’s also partially because I do feel free to watch TV movies until 2: am. Therefore, I am not doing something really wrong, actually, because I’m getting 7 to 8 hours of good sleep, which is needed, it’s just that things seem slower, both due to my age, physically condition and the Covid isolation. I do have vivid dreams, and am thankful for the ability to sleep, which my wife of 67 is not so good at.
I continue my waking up process with TV news (5 to 6 networks surfing- CNN Phils, ANC TV, DZMM, Al Jazeera, BBC News, Bloomberg) connect to the outer world, maybe a random snippet of a show, then breakfast and the daily struggle to get something meaningful done. Those are the group of thoughts that fill my mind upon waking.
2. How have you been coping with the situation in past several weeks?
Just coping. Applying restraint, purposefulness and focus on completing works for shows which may or may not pull through ( 2 out of 4 this year may be cancelled or just put online, which for me is bitterly disappointing, but I will swallow this emetic pill in light of the broader suffering of humans these days). I try to keep a routine, pay full attention to all the social rules that come up vis a vis citizens and government, keep in touch through the internet and landlines, try not to be such a bitch to my wife and daughter who are locked-down with me (41 days na kami) and try and survive in as decent and productive a way as I can manage.
I am no social work hero, but I do try to be as kind to all extra workers I encounter, offering tips at the market, where I have to drive for my wife, to unemployed jeepney drivers who sideline as parking guides. I try and give a Php100 tip, whereas before 20 ok na, in sympathy for their situation. If the garbage man does come, again, big tip, parang pasko, pero mas kailangan, really. I am not religious, but am deeply grateful for my good fortune to have a home, meals, water, security during these trying times. I try hard to paint, as my men cannot come to help. Going out for food, I wear a double mask (washable cloth over which a re-usable N-95 is placed for double layer, double source protection), white cotton gloves laundered after every labas, distancing as a common sense strategy, Barangay Pass in a media plastic on my neck, para bagang concert pass, and just trying to be sensitive, alert, balanced and hopefully compassionate at any possible opportunity: While not really a believer in it, mas nagbibgay ako ng palimos ngayon knowing opportunities are really scarce for poor people.
I’ve so far donated 2 large paintings to Covid frontliner and hunger fighting fundraisers, amounting to about 250k, expecting to be asked some more, and I’ll try habang kaya. I’ve paid my 2 collaborating assistants 2 months advance, because they do NEED it, have families, and I have no second thoughts. I may have to advance another month, we cope, we try, we hope, and work when we can. I can still handle it, and plan to emerge from this healthy and full of goodwill. Positive, just not Covid-positive.
I keep in touch peripherally by FB, make adjustments to the exhibition year on the phone (landline) or cel or by email or FB again, and just open myself to adjusting, as this is a serious crisis, but equanimity, common sense, empathy, discipline and a desire to live further are all needed to move to a better or different future after this.
As a family none of us, me, my wife, 2 children, have felt illness and therefore have not been tested: As if madili gawin: Di naman kami Durtertard lackeys or naghihingalo, so we’ll have to look for testing later, when that trickles down to more of the ordinary citizens. We try to do chores at home, keep clean, eat balanced, take vitamins, wash hands often, follow a regime of common sense prescribed hygiene.
I’m finding ways to pay as many bills as we can (some bayad centers take cash nowadays) so as to minimize the landslide of payables once things normalize. I accept that all things are more expensive in these days, but to even be able to think about these is a privilege, so no complaints.
I contemplate short term possibilities, but am always on my toes for instant developments: A kind of relaxed karate horse pose approach to whatever the crisis brings our way. In my immediate family, or even extended one, only one middle aged lady, daughter of my bro-in law’s brother, has been hit: She spent 3 weeks near ICU, got well, got a Php 1.3 million bill, which Philhealth answered for. Beyond that, my clan is fortunate, but not complacent.
I try to plan only 2 weeks advanced nowadays, but will adjust when time folds back into a longer leeway situation. I try to touch base with friends from afar, specially in Venice because they have been hard hit. Most of my family live in NCR, and we try keeping in touch. I call my son via FB voice every other day as he lives with a friend and is locked down there. Maybe in a few days, we’ll find a way for him to come home for his birthday, and to set up his work from home animator’s station, which will likely be the new normal for him. Also, I pray our car doesn’t fail us yet because mechanics won’t get things done these days.
I’ve done 3 or four Covid related interviews (by email) this being the 4th, and entertain them if it can be of help to our community. Interestingly, these 42 days have gone by quick, and when I was younger, I did do durational performances, so I do have a bit of patience. If you can last being an artist without big payouts for 35 or so years, you cultivate patience. I have, so far. Knock on wood.
3. Is the current situation affecting your practice and how?
Of course it is. Scheduling, my exhbition calendar until 2022 has been affected already, not to mention the aftermath of lockdown, which will alter our social habits. I am getting used to the notion of no Openings, as social distancing will change that, until an effective cure or vaccine comes along.
I miss my collaborators, who I work with average of 39 hrs a week. They are on ”vacation” with pay, not their fault, but we could have done some things. I try to paint everyday, whether 45 minutes or 5 to 6 hours, depending on many factors. But I compel myself to try, late wake up and all. I do get to paint until about 12:30 midnight as a way of making Bawe. I do not concentrate on Covid as a topic, because I want to do art that transcends some concrete moments while being specific in its emotional methods, but if Covid has a big lesson to tell, I listen, ponder, and see if it works as art.
As you know, my work thrives on the day to day, but I hunt for the perspective to situate the work in the human condition, past, present, unknown future. Some people say History allows us to see patterns that make for prescient visions: I keep my eyes open for these moments. Still, I aim to excite myself, my viewers later, make the work engaging even if it began, and often does, as a solitary pursuit.I cannot see the physical conditions that will govern set-up, ingress, transport, marketing, festivals, etc, but am keem to see in the near future. My mother and I quarrelled over many things but we did agree that the key to being alive was a willingness to adjust to changes. I am anticipating, but preparing to act in whichever direction might prove most appropriate, creative, honest, humane, sustainable.
Also, as of now, I have a growing fear of having no more brushes (napupudpod lahat), no more paints. I have canvases good for 1 year, and ideas good for until I die. I hope the other materials I can find in due time. Or at least accept that I will have to adjust to that loss creatively. May the creator grant me the flexibility: Not so easy as you hit 64, and beyond.
4. What’s your dream and hope for the future?
I have so many, but to link them to the present, I will say the following:
I sincerely hope we change our lifestyles after this, having seen some possibilities which were once unacceptable but now, after being forced into them, appear feasible.
I sincerely hope we come out of this more humble, and not with the hubris that humanity will find a way and therefore can get away with all its transgressions,
but somehow come to terms with equilibrium between itself and all other conditions and inhabitants of paradise, this earth.
I hope we all become wiser, not haughty, but more compassionate, more related, more humane.
I hope I don’t and won’t sound like a fool.
Cheers. It ends here.