Another Award for Cajipe-Endaya in New York

New York City, New York - June 8, 2009 – Aida Bartolome, Executive Director of the FOUNDATION FOR FILIPINO ARTISTS, INC.(FFAI), and Society of Philippine American Artists’ (SPAA’s) Trustee, announces that Imelda Cajipe Endaya was awarded First Prize at the juried exhibition entitled “Beautiful Aging,” ongoing until August 31, 2009 at the United Hebrew Lazarus Gallery, sponsored by the Rotary Club of New Rochelle and United Hebrew Geriatric Center, in New Rochelle, NY. Jurors were Tracey Fitzpatrick from the Neuburger Museum, Lisa Robb from the Pelham Art Center and Jean-Paul Maitinsky from the Hudson River Museum. The exhibit includes 30 pieces, chosen from over two hundred entries. Curator Jodie Moise who designed the exhibition at the new art gallerysaid that Imelda’s award recognized her participation with three mixed media works on textile entitled: Woman Beyond Place, Eighty-Six Emerging Eighteen, and The Poppy Necktie. The show seeks to salute the aging process as positive part of our life’s journey, in celebration of the United Hebrew’s 90th year of caring for older adults. The UH Lazarus Gallery is located at 391 Pelham Road, New Rochelle, New York 10805. For information, contact Linda Forman at 914-632-2804 or lforman@uhgc.org .

Meanwhile in Manila, Cajipe Endaya received the “Ani ng Dangal” Award from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts during the nationwide International Arts Festival held on Arts Month last February. For garnering international prizes for their art, five individuals were given the award in music, seven in dance, five in visual arts, three in literary arts, fourteen in film and broadcast, and twenty-one choral groups.

Since its inception in 1988, the FFAI has actively supported Filipino artists in the local community to promote Filipino artistry and creativity as well as multi-cultural understanding. FFAI is a non-profit organization under IRS 501 (c) (3). Its mission is to help artists promote and develop human awareness, cultivate the utmost potential of people and be able to take on leadership roles in training and human development, for the betterment of the global community in New York. Imelda was a guest resident artist of FFAI and taught art in its summer program in 2007. FFAI and SPAA, in keeping with their traditional ties continue to co-organize activities and events on the visual arts.

from:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30466951&id=1174441348&comments=#/note.php?note_id=88781627873&ref=nf

Curating/Curing: Curatorial Notes for UnCommon Sense - Trauma, interrupted, too

Several years ago, Judy Freya Sibayan performed Scapular Gallery Nomad, a mobile gallery, where the artist – as curator, owner and vehicle – wore scapular-like pouches containing the works of a good number of artists. Falling terribly ill, she momentarily abandoned the project, but took it up again when she realized that “being ill, being in the state of dis-integration / dis-order, I needed to weave myself back to the myths of creation for the very myths of artmaking are the myths of integration / ordering. I needed to imagine myself back to life.” Just as she cared for herself in this performance by curating upon her body, she also cared for the artists by curating, wearing and displaying their works in her body gallery. For indeed, “curing” and “curating,” according to the medical doctor-curator Koan Jeff Baysa (http://www.ctrlp-artjournal.org/pdfs/CtrlP_Issue2.pdf) have the same root word, “curare,” that means in Latin, “to help.”

When I conceptualized trauma, interrupted in 2005 - after several legs of my still ongoing) research on women artists in Asia - I started out with an academic agenda: to investigate – through forums, workshops and exhibitions - an underdeveloped field of feminist investigation by exploring the link between trauma, art and healing – a thread that emerged in my interactions with women in Indonesia, Thailand, China, Korea, Malaysia and Japan. But as things turned out, what started out as a largely academic goal was, I realize in hindsight now, actually a curatorial practice that parallels, at times intersecting with that of Sibayan’s and Baysa’s notion of curation. By curating, I help and cure myself as well as countless known and unknown others who bear and endure on their individual and social bodies an enormous traumatic weight.

The first trauma, interrupted exhibition (TI) was held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main Gallery in 2007 with 18 women artists from six countries asking themselves: “What can art do in the face of global suffering? Do we interrupt the trauma or do we hurt the situation in our attempts to help?” And they addressed the question through paintings, installations, performance, photographs and videos that lock horns with a range of traumas, including those resulting from conflict situations (World War II and the conflict in Mindanao), natural disasters, human rights violations, mental and physical afflictions. A good number of the works compelled viewers to come to terms with the traumas of history, particularly the still-unresolved issue of sexual slavery during the Japanese occupation. There were works that focused on the self and everyday histories, and still others suggested some of the possible routes towards healing and empowerment.

Trauma, interrupted, too or TI2 flows from and follows a similar track, but with significant differences, the most obvious of which is this time, the roster includes male artists; second, the works are more wall-bound, mostly paintings, with a sprinkling of photographs, free-standing sculptures, installations and videos; third, I endeavored to present a range of artistic persuasions and trajectories, with seasoned artists just inches away from the “greenhorns,” some of whom have yet to have their first solos; and finally, while a large number of works in the first TI dealt with more “macro,” global and catastrophic events like war, disasters, and traumas wrought by human hands, this modest sequel is more focused on “small” sufferings as well as small triumphs in everyday Philippines.

A group of artists draw on personal experiences as seen in the way Marina Cruz reflects on her family and its tensions in a series of dark, monochromatic portraits done from 2007-2009. Judy Freya Sibayan excavates and re-collects the abovementioned scapulars which she once wore on the “museum” of her ailing body; Gina Osterloh re-enacts through a festive photograph her summer of rashes and vomiting, but within a confetti-ed ticker-tape parade built environment; Jing Turalba fashions and wears a ballistic armor, and walks – as seen in the video documentation - through busy streets, referencing and at the same time, coming to terms with the loss of her father, and by extension, many other victims of violent death; Teena Saulo emerges from her own personal losses through a photographic tableau-like “cenakulo” scene; Marika Constantino and Abby Yao speak of ongoing unresolved dilemmas and feelings of being trapped, while Mael de Guzman’s solitary and hesitant figure hints at the anxieties of following a known but yet to be explored horizon.

The lush canvasses of Neil Manalo and Jerson Samson, as well as the static, thick and pointillist tableaus of John Paul Antido zero in on the larger social context by providing us with a sense of the constricted, crowded spaces of a dysfunctional social and economic landscape, where trauma is deeply rooted in poverty. On the other hand, Eric Guazon presents us with a face distressed by war, but it is one ironically assembled through play and conjured in the make-believe world of toys and children, the “collateral damage” of conflicts not of their own making. In a similar playful but deadly serious vein, Alma Quinto’s soft sculpture/toys are biting comments on childhoods lost to abuse; and on the pettiness and hypocrisies of female politicians, here represented through their footwear, alluding to the Imeldific. As she laughingly states: “They don’t have political platforms, but they do have platform shoes.”

It is Gilda Cordero Fernando however, who takes us to the most humorous, tongue-in-cheek, and irreverent route in her image of the Madonna, who as she goes through the flames strikes a martyric posture that recalls the best of soap opera. It is a pose, not so much of suffering but of sufferance in a context where women bear their “crosses” and come out scarred but still standing. Roberto Acosta also alludes to the Madonna figure by creating high cheek-boned noble faces of Northern Filipinos posed in Mother-and-Child-like embrace; made out of clay and inspired by Mexican imagery, these figures similarly fired by the cleansing ritual of flame.

Trauma – particularly one that is inflicted by humans on fellow creatures - is an unspeakable injury that is well nigh impossible to retrieve and represent. Resistant to linear time and literal, common sense retellings, trauma unsettles common memory’s prior schemas, disturbs authority, and disrupts metanarratives and settled stories hinged on linear, narrative time that suits sovereign politics. Art, with its uncommon techniques, resources and ways of sensing and making sense has the power to retrieve those areas of experience that are resistant to common or ordinary representational systems of recollection and reference.

Juan Alfredo Aquilizan’s gestural and fluid strokes, Maria Taniguchi’s, Winner Jumalon's and Pamela Yan’s cryptic statements, the tangled lines and spaces of Claro Ramirez’ ‘crystal ball’ and Jim Orencio’s rusty leaves, while less culture-specific and image-based, give us a sense of what art and its formal resources of line, texture, color, shape and so on can do to recover and sharpen our uncommon senses.

The expressive faces of Kiko Escora, the oozing face of Elvert Banares, the weeping landscape of Rodel Tapaya, the desperate faces of Juanito Torres’ depleted and beleaguered characters, the silent mouths Leo Abaya’s moving silent picture, along with the female power-infused environment of Cristina Taniguchi transport us to the domain of feelings, of pleasure and displeasure, of ease, as well as of unease and disquietude.

Finally, the mothers and grandmothers of INVISIBLE Institute create an installation from waste – a project they started three days before and during opening day. INVISIBLE Institute aims to make visible unseen waste and unseen people, who until now have had no potential to earn or learn. It was initiated by Ann Wizer, who along with Sibayan, Quinto and Osterloh, was one of the participating artists of the first trauma, interrupted (TI) exhibit. In the first TI, Wizer – with daughter Naomi - contributed an interactive work based on a simulated family bathroom, on which viewers were enjoined to drain their pain by leaving their graffiti marks on the walls. This time around, Wizer joined the 20 other artists gathered for this show by bringing the women of INVISIBLE Institute to the CCP to create a collaborative hand crafted artwork with useful waste materials.

In a global culture based on excess and overproduction, there is, as Susan Sontag observes in her essay, “Against Interpretation, “a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life – its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness – conjoin to dull our sensory faculties.” Through this second installment of trauma, interrupted, I make a declaration of faith in art and artmaking, as well as the curative powers of curation. Through these practices’ powerful visual, sensorial and tactile resources, they make available uncommon modes of seeing, feeling, and sensing, thus facilitating our recovery of those faculties which make up and define our common humanity.

for photos and more of trauma, interrupted, too:
http://www.facebook.com/friends/?mutual&id=732674080&sid=873d6a1fa67208a1bf08d91b716b5f82#/editnote.php?note_id=169749635634

http://www.facebook.com/friends/?mutual&id=732674080&sid=873d6a1fa67208a1bf08d91b716b5f82#/album.php?aid=2024989&id=1174441348

Gutierrez' Organ Market in documentamadrid

Saturday, May 2, 2009 at 10:00pm
End Time:
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 6:15am
Location:
Cines Princesa Sala 9/ Cine Estudio del Círculo de Bellas Artes
City/Town:
Madrid, Spain
Email:
http://www.documentamadrid.com/ficha.php?cod_pelic
While the body politic of the Western World is being made “safer and safer” through tougher immigration laws and all kinds of high-tech counter terrorist military operations, the “natural”, biological body, of western individuals is increasingly invested with a similar technological pursuit of security at all costs- including dreams of longevity or even immortality through rejuvenation techniques and transplants.

But at what price? What are the collateral damages? Outside the walls that protect western subjectivities, in a planet of slums, there live millions of expendable, vulnerable bodies.

The Tondo district, near Manila harbour in the Philippines, is one of the poorest and most densely populated urban areas in Asia. In the slums of Tondo people sell their organs to make a living. A cornea or a kidney can be “donated” for as much as US$ 2000. Squalor and transplant biotech converge in a surreal world where science-fictional dystopias have become reality, and the poor are harvested for body parts by the rich.

ORGAN MARKET is a video/ text piece that documents a frightening vision of the near future that has invaded our present. Ethical and political issues that seemed to belong within the context of abstract debates or futuristic fabulations are dramatically materialized in the slums of present day Manila.

Remaking Waste with Invisible Institute

March 31 to April 2 (ingress till opening day). Old VHS/cassette tapes, clean used plastic bags, dry cleaner plastic bags, bottle tops and other scraps were reworked and turned into an installation by the mothers and grandmothers of INVISIBLE Institute. It was displayed at 3rd floor hallway, one of the exhibit venues of Uncommon Sense: trauma, interrupted, too. Exhibit ran till April 30.

INVISIBLE Institute aims to make visible unseen waste and unseen people, who until now have had no potential to earn or learn. It was initiated by Ann Wizer, one of the participating artists of the first trauma, interrupted (TI) exhibit (www.trauma-interrupted.org) held in 2007 at the CCP Main Gallery. In the first TI, Wizer – with daughter Naomi - contributed an interactive work based on a simulated family bathroom, on which viewers were enjoined to drain their pain by leaving their graffiti marks on the walls.

This time around, Wizer joined 20 other artists by bringing the women of INVISIBLE Institute to the CCP to create a collaborative hand crafted artwork with useful waste materials.

The exhibition was presented by ARTHOC (The House of Comfort Art Network), in cooperation with the Drawing Room, Silverlens, and Britania Art Projects. ARTHOC (www.trauma-interrupted.org/arthoc), a non-stock, non-profit organization that believes in the power of art to empower, heal and comfort the afflicted, emerged from the first trauma, interrupted exhibition. It takes its name from Alma Quinto’s House of Comfort Art Project conceived and conducted for trauma, interrupted in the form of workshops for marginalized and traumatized communities nationwide.

For more on trauma, interrupted, too:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025954&id=1174441348&saved#/album.php?aid=2024989&id=1174441348

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025954&id=1174441348&saved#/note.php?note_id=169749635634

(photos in this entry courtesy July Larubes, ARTHOC staff)

trauma, interrupted, too opens April 2 at the CCP

Press Release

Uncommon Sense: trauma, interrupted, too

The House of Comfort Art Network or ARTHOC, in cooperation with the Drawing Room, Silverlens, Tin-aw and Britania Art Projects, presents Uncommon Sense: trauma, interrupted, too, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Pasilyo Vicente Manansala (second floor hallway) and Pasilyo Guillermo Tolentino (third floor hallway), April 2 to 30. The public is invited to the opening at 5pm, April 2.
Curated by University of the Philippines art studies professor Flaudette May Datuin, this show is a sequel to the first trauma, interrupted Exhibition held at the CCP, June to July 2007, with 18 women artists from six countries participating (www.trauma-interrupted.org). Trauma, interrupted, too or TI2 will feature at least 20 male and female artists who will show works that focus – as in the first trauma, interrupted – not on the representation of trauma, per se or its source (the traumatic event), but on the ways by which trauma as trope and as frame can unsettle and disrupt “common sense” narratives and representations in the everyday where pain, suffering, coping and making sense of trauma becomes a political rather than a solitary struggle and mode of resistance.
Participating artists include TI1 “originals”: Gina Osterloh, Alma Quinto, Judy Freya Sibayan and Ann Wizer. These women will be joined by colleagues from various age groups, political and artistic persuasions, working on a range of media: Leo Abaya, Roberto Acosta, John Paul Antido, Juan Alfredo Aquilizan, Elvert Banares, Marika Constantino, Marina Cruz, Mael de Guzman, Kiko Escora, Gilda Cordero Fernando, Eric Guazon, Winner Jumalon, Neil Manalo, Jim Orencio, Claro Ramirez, Don Salubayba, Teena Saulo, Cristina Taniguchi, Maria Taniguchi, Jaypee Samson, Jerson Samson, Julius Samson, Rodel Tapaya, Juanito Torres, Pamela Yan and Abby Yao.
ARTHOC (www.trauma-interrupted.org/arthoc), a non-stock, non-profit organization that believes in the power of art to empower, heal and comfort the afflicted, emerged from the first trauma, interrupted exhibition. It takes its name from Alma Quinto’s House of Comfort Art Project conceived and conducted for trauma, interrupted in the form of workshops for marginalized and traumatized communities nationwide.
CCP is located at Roxas Boulevard, Quezon City. For more information, please call ARTHOC at 414-7446 and 0917 407 9196 or CCP at 8323702.

Gina Osterloh's Shooting Blanks debuts in LA

Gina Osterloh

Feb. 21st – March 28th, 2009
Opening Reception Saturday February 21st from 6 pm to 10 pm


Shooting Blanks is Gina Osterloh's debut Los Angeles solo exhibition as her photographs continue to deftly combine elements of sculpture, performance, and painting.


Building upon her use of restrained serial performances and gesture, the photographs in Shooting Blanks mark a pivotal shift in Gina Osterloh's arc of work. While previous work insisted upon the use of her own body, Shooting Blanks expands to incorporate other anonymous bodies, and "cast paper maché mannequins, as she transforms the human subject of her surreal photographs into a prop, devoid of identity." (Fairley, Art Asia Pacific)


Created during her recent Fulbright Scholar Fellowship in Manila, Osterloh obsessively cut and collaged colored office bond paper, which comes in only four colors in the Philippines – candy pink, blue, yellow and green, as well as recycled paper from a local factory in Manila. The result is unsettling images of life size rooms where Osterloh activates metaphors of camouflage beyond the language of war and makes visible the psychological and physical space that both the body and its environment occupy.


Gina Osterloh's photographs are unexpected propositions that interrupt established narrative through an oblique angle. Employing a conceptualist strategy, Osterloh incorporates a loose rule-based practice that investigates the body as material and image as language. Shooting Blanks is based upon the impotence and futility of language, dislocation, mimicry, and the desire to connect with one's surroundings.

For more information, please contact Francois Ghebaly at francois@chungkingproject.com or at the gallery at +1 213 625 1802


Chung King Project
945 Chung King Road
Los Angeles, CA 90012
USA
+1 213 625 1802
info@chungkingproject.com
www.chungkingproject.com

trauma, interrupted, too underway

Yes, there is going to be a second trauma, interrupted exhibition (www.trauma-interrupted.org and http://maydatuin.multiply.com/photos/album/27/photos_from_an_exhibition). But while the first one - held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines June to July 2007 - featured women artists from six countries, this one reaches out to mostly young local artists of all genders. Nicknamed "Uncommon Sense," TI2 also hopes to raise funds for the NGO that emerged from TI1 - the House of Comfort Art Network or ARTHOC (www.trauma-interrupted.org/arthoc), which holds free art workshops for traumatized and marginalized communities (for example, www.barbingpinay.multiply.com).

To be held April 2-30 2009 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines hallways, this exhibit is also dedicated to Sid Hildawa, who died March 2008, and who was one of those who supported the cash-strapped TI1.

Pictures show curatorial visits to Drawing Room and Tin-aw galleries, and to artists based in Bulacan (around 2 hours North of Manila), Marina Cruz, Rodel Tapaya and Juanito Torres.

Photos courtesy Rommel Igarta

Datuin's book awarded

Dr. Flaudette May V. Datuin's book -Home Body Memory: The Feminine as
Feminist 'Elsewhere' (Filipina Artists in the Visual Arts, 19th
Century to the Present) (2002) was chosen as a University of the
Philippines Press Centennial Publication. The UPP Centennial
Publications is a collection that comprises excellent works carefully
selected by the University of the Philippines Press Editorial Board
from our classic, latest, and forthcoming titles. Written by some of
the best minds the University has produced, the selection includes
books which have added to the intellectual ferment, impacted upon
aspects of life and culture, served as pioneering studies, and
provided summative views on important topics. Among the authors are
National Scientists, National Artists, and respected scholars.

Other awardees who in the Humanities, who were honored in ceremonies, December 12:

Dr. Alice G. Guillermo - Protest / Revolutionary Art in the
Philippines 1970-1990 (2001)
Dr. Gerard Lico -Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture and
Urbanism in the Philippines (2008)

Osterloh is a 2008 Silverlens Grantee

Silverlens Foundation (SLF) grantee Gina Osterloh gave an artist talk Nov. 22, from 3-5pm at Silverlens Gallery. A 2008 Fulbright grantee, Osterloh, a Filipina-American artist who works installation, photography and performance, is the sole recipient of the 2008 Silverlens Foundation Completion Grant. In each of her lush, mostly large-scale photographs, Osterloh treats the body and its surrounding environment as symbiotic physical and psychological spaces. In the series Shooting Blanks, the room itself is treated as a second skin created with hundreds of paper cutouts. Osterloh graduated with a Bachelor of Communications/Media Studies from the De Paul University in Chicago and has a Masters of Fine Art from the University of California Irvine.

Osterloh's Shooting Blanks series will be shown in the 2008 Silverlens Foundation Grantees Exhibition, which runs from November 20 to December 20, 2008 at Silverlens Gallery. Other works on show are Conrado Velasco's Pixel Towers and Lena Cobangbang's Overland series.

The photographs shown in this year’s Exhibition will be part of the Silverlens Foundation Collection. Founded in 2006, SLF has been accepting applications from photographers and artists working with photography relevant to the Philippines. The SLF IS the first permanent collection of photography in the Philippines.

2008 SILVERLENS FOUNDATION Grantees are:

Completion Grantee
Gina Osterloh - Shooting Blanks

Acquisition Grantees
Lena Cobangbang - Overland
Conrado Velasco - Pixel Towers

Asian Cultural Council-SLF Fellowship Grantee
Wawi Navarroza

Silverlens also hosted a Talk on Grants on November 29, Saturday, from 3-5pm with speakers from various local and international cultural institutions on hand to talk about available grants for artists.

Rogue magazine is the official media partner of the Silverlens Foundation 2008 Grantees Exhibition.

Silverlens Gallery is at the 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati City. For inquiries, call 816-0044 / 0905-265-0873, email manage@silverlensphoto.com or visit www.silverlensphoto.com.

Yong Soon Min's Wearing History lives on

Yong Soon Min's Wearing History, a project she started for the Trauma, interrupted exhibition is alive and well as shown in this link in this fashion blog of all places!?!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=51&entry_id=33361

trauma, interrupted in Australia

Several audiences in Australia were informed about trauma, interrupted through a series of lectures by curator and organizer, Flaudette May V. Datuin. These lectures were held in connection with her visiting fellowship at the Australian National
University, September to November 2008. Below are the details of the lectures in Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane.

1.Uncommon Sense
Flaudette May V. Datuin

In Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag suggested that ‘What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.’ I respond to Sontag’s call by speaking on the general topic of trauma in the visual arts, an underdeveloped field of investigation in art history and feminist art history in particular. Drawing on my recent research and curatorial projects, I will provide examples of how selected contemporary artists contribute to this theoretical and critical agenda.

delivered at:
The University of Sydney, 9 September 2008
the Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology Series, 17.15

Queensland College of Art, 8 October 2008
Lunchbox lecture, 12.30-1.30PM
CENTRAL LECTURE THEATRE QCA, Griffith University, Brisbane

2. Feminist Art Somehow, Somewhere: trauma, interrupted(A Report from the Philippines )
Flaudette May V. Datuin, PhD

Somewhere, somehow, Do-It-Yourself initiatives are happening away - at times hovering within, but at other times, beyond – the radar of local (Manila) and global (Global Feminisms and Wack!) epicenters (it is interesting to note for instance, that there are no Asians in Wack! and no Filipinas in Global Feminisms, either as theorists and artists). I propose to report on one such initiative that was launched in Manila in 2007 – trauma, interrupted exhibition (www.trauma-interrupted.org) – an ongoing international art project featuring 18 artists from six countries, who explored the links between art, trauma and healing, an underdeveloped field of art-historical feminist investigation. My presentation will cover the curatorial vision, its lineage, art-historical and theoretical routes, the artists and their works, process and issues related to organizing international events in the periphery, as well as theoretical and methodological problems and possible directions related to the subject of trauma in/as art.

Delivered at:
Ninth International Women in Asia Conference(29 September-1 October, 2008: Women in Asia: Transition and Interchange
St Lucia Campus of the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
The School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies hosted the event at the Gordon Greenwood Building (#32)
and
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Building 9, H C Coombs Bldg, 18 November 2008, 12.30-2pm
The Australian National University, Canberra

3. Roll Call
Flaudette May V. Datuin

In Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag wrote that nowadays we are stuck with defending art, and we quarrel among ourselves on how to justify art and this we do by asking of a work of art what it says – about identity, about culture, about context - rather than what it does. “What is important now,” she says, “is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.’ I respond to Sontag’s call by speaking on the general topic of trauma in the visual arts, an underdeveloped field of investigation in art history and feminist art history in particular. Drawing on my recent research and curatorial projects, including my work-in-progress in the Australian National University, and informed by Benedict Kerkvliet's study of everyday politics in the Philippines, I will contribute to Sontag’s critical and theoretical call by situating my study on trauma in the Philippines as a colonial legacy, one that we can transform from a legacy of suffering to that of a form of critical (post)colonial resistance and sufferance.

Delivered at
The Philippine Studies Group seminar, 21 November 2008
Rowland Building, The Australian National University, Canberra

4.Uncommon Sense: Art, Trauma and the Affective Turn
A work in progress
By Flaudette May V. Datuin

In a century burdened with so much traumatic weight, in a global culture based on excess and overproduction, there is, Susan Sontag observes in her essay, “Against Interpretation, “a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life – its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness – conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic – and that of the artist, I must add - must be assessed.”
However, instead of buckling down to this task, we – cultural theorists, activists, critics, curators and artists - are nowadays “stuck with defending art,” and we quarrel among ourselves on how to justify art and this we do by asking of a work of art what it says – about identity, about culture, about context - rather than what it does. And it in light of this quarrel, as she puts it, that I hope to contribute to Sontag’s call for us “to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.”
In this work-in-progress seminar, I respond to Sontag's call by gesturing towards the direction of the "affective turn," which hinges on the concept of affect, as developed by Brian Massumi, among others.

Delivered at:
Old Canberra House, 14 November 2008, 1-2.30
Research School of Humanities, The Australian National University, Canberra

In a related event, Datuin also participated in a group discussion organized by the University Technology Sydney, October 31, in connection with a Philippine photomedia show curated by Gina Fairley. Datuin talked about one of the works in the show, Lani Maestro's a voice remembers nothing, a video-diptych of the ocean and the drone of the whispered names of those who went missing during Marcos' Martial Law regime. In her talk, Datuin's drew on her study of trauma and the visual arts, which she was working on during her fellowship at ANU.

Ann Wizer: Invisible

Ann Wizer
INVISIBLE
unseen people unseen waste

Galleria Duemila
October 3-31, 2008

Ann Wizer is from the US but has called Asia her home for over two decades, having lived in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. As a visual artist always concerned with fine craftsmanship, she has worked with painting, photography, installations, theater collaborations, costume design and sculpture. Being also an environmentalist and activist, she uses post-consumer waste as her primary art material, seeing it as, “the most obvious way to address issues of environmental abuse.”

Unintentionally at first, she has long worked with debris - first from nature then later from industry. In Japan in the 1980s she collected odd bits of nature from garden cuttings to used, wooden, disposable chopsticks (washed, of course) and found interest in the cultural significance of these materials. In the Philippines she used again what she found around her: rice, spices, earth, grasses, tropical foliage and strewn birds’ nests after typhoons. Eventually, her despair for the loss of that nature from rampant, unmonitored damage, lead her to address the deeper complexities: the politics of the environment, squarely confronting those issues by using mainly plastic trash in her creations. Over the 1990s her environmental works were fused with ironic humor to spotlight the careless disregard of big industries for their non-existent waste management, or what she calls “CSI: Corporate Social Irresponsibility”. On moving to Jakarta in 2000 she turned towards finding “positive solutions” instead of simply making sarcastic, disgruntled comments to the art world.

“I work with garbage. Why? Because there is so much of it. When you think about it, it’s absurd that we are we making anything that just gets thrown away. There is no “away”. Trash, waste, garbage - whatever you call it, before was a nuisance. Now it’s a crisis.
-Ann Wizer

In Jakarta in 2002, as an art “intervention” she left her studio practice to work directly with trash pickers to focus attention and find simple solutions for improving the lives of countless unseen people; the trash pickers who live with our ever-growing mountains of waste. This initiative became XSProject Foundation in 2004 which, ‘uses design and education to protect the environment and reduce poverty”. (www.xsprojectgroup.com) The programs revolve around finding creative ways to utilize waste to create new livelihood opportunities for those living in poverty.

The exhibit “INVISIBLE” features another social interaction, an off-shoot of her XSProject. This time the social interaction is with Filipino women; mothers and grandmothers. These older unemployed women have many dependants (children and aging parents too), relying on their care and attention. These women have low incomes at best and, being tied to dependants, have no real opportunities for employment. These “invisible” ones, meaning unseen but in need of income all the same, are her focus now. The materials Wizer is using in this project are also “invisible”- unmeasured, unnoticed factory waste that goes straight from manufacturers to dump sites, rivers or scrap dealers, and, the ever present plastic bag. Like XSProject, she hopes that this interaction can grow into a sustainable income generating activity by using the simple traditional skill of crocheting to utilize waste to make green products for local and overseas markets. People interested in partnering on this project can contact her.

Gallery A displays the outcomes of a series of workshops done with Filipino women: the Invisible Institute. The I.I. is another attempt of Wizer to build something sustainable for the poor, this time for Filipino mothers and grandmothers. Using the skill of crocheting to use up an endless supply of plastic bags and invisible factory waste, the creativity, the artist in each of them, will surface. The documentation is by five different photographers, living in Manila.

Gallery B of Galleria Duemila is Wizer’s Executive Lounge, showcasing two oddly shaped “executive chairs” that are stuffed with cleaned, shredded packaging waste and corresponding photographic landscape pieces. The chairs are made especially for those CEOs of transnational companies and government officials who just aren’t addressing environmental problems. This furniture was created with the trash picker women in Jakarta who asked Wizer to create a special income generating project that they could perform during the day while at home with the many babies and kids. These women pick trash at night, partly to remain unseen. Again, irony comes into play. The very companies whose trash she has used in the furniture and the XSProject products, are those companies she approached to support XSProject and was again and again denied. Since then, Wizer has seen many of her concepts and product ideas offered as corporate giveaways from those companies. Companies seem to see Wizer’s XSProject concepts only as promotional devices to increase their sales.

Wizer’s photographs of sick landfills are distorted visually. These distortions are “necessary truths” she says, “to demonstrate how man, to the same degree has twisted nature with our destructive, selfish tinkering.”

Ctrl+P Issue 13 ready for downloading

http://www.ctrlp-artjournal.org/pdfs/CtrlP_Issue13.pdf
Published in this volume are papers presented at the 2008 International Symposium on
> Electronic Art (ISEA) invited-panel “Passing and Peril in the
> Information Super Highway.” Kóan Jeff Baysa moderated the panel and
> did an introduction with the same title. The other papers are
> “Reflections of Contemporary Chinese Society: Representations of
> Chinese Identity in Cyberspace” by Jiayi Young; “Kenkanryu (The Hate
> Korean Wave): Images of Hatred and Racism in Japanese Manga” by Mina
> Cheon; “Self-representation s of Malaysian Bloggers” by Roopesh
> Sitharan; and “How We Have Represented Ourselves as Ctrl+P thus Far”
> by issue editor Judy Freya Sibayan.
>
> The second part of this issue focuses on the art market and the value
> of art to contextualize Ctrl+P's decision to advertise the Asian
> Contemporary Art Fair New York a first with Ctrl+P and a timely
> opportunity considering the current world financial crisis. Marian
> Pastor Roces reviews “On (Surplus) Value in Art” a book by Diedrich
> Diederichsen published by Witte de With. Ana Prvacki talks on her art
> practice as a form of giving. Varsha Nair offers an image to represent
> her deep sadness as artist-friends lose themselves in the commerce of
> art.
>
> We also have a review by Sara Haq and Olivia Altaras, a conversation
> about the exhibition “Or” by The Readymaids.
>
> As always we ask that you help us disseminate this journal to your
> friends and e-groups. To be part of our mailing list, please email us
> at ctrl_p_artjournal@ yahoo.com.

Judy Sibayan and Ctrl+P at Witte de With's Rotterdam Dialogues: The Critics

WITTE DE WITH
CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
Rotterdam

Rotterdam Dialogues: The Critics
Symposium
9, 10, 11 October 2008
Registration daily from 12:30 p.m., program begins at 1:30 p.m.

Over the course of several months, Witte de With presents a program of three symposia, titled Rotterdam Dialogues: Critics, Curators, Artists. Structured to establish a lively platform for debate and exchange, these symposia explore the practice of three of the central protagonists of the contemporary art world: the critic, the curator and the artist. Are these still the cultural actors who decide what is made, what is seen, and whether it is any good?

The art critic will be the subject of the first symposium, to be held on 9, 10 & 11 October 2008, titled Rotterdam Dialogues: the Critics. These three days are structured around a series of lectures, conversations, and panel discussions, creating a variety of moments for dialogue between the invited guests and the public.

Speakers
The speakers include an international spectrum of art critics, from as far afield as Manila, New York, Istanbul and Montreal, along with several voices from closer to home. Together they represent a range of media, from glossy art magazines, to online blogs and daily newspapers. Speakers from the world of academia will also be present, along with several artists who write. Rotterdam Dialogues: the Critics will reveal the people behind contemporary written art discourse, giving the public a chance to question their editorial decisions on what is offered to the reader, what is omitted and why.

The speakers include: Jennifer Allen (Artforum), Andrew Berardini (The Expanded Field), Achille Bonito Oliva (art historian); Martijn Boven (8weekly), Matthew Collings (artist, BBC), Ingrid Commandeur (Metropolis M), Diedrich Diederichsen (Prof.), Edo Dijksterhuis (Het Financieele Dagblad), Richard Dyer (Contemporary), Dominic Eichler (frieze), Isabelle Graw (Texte zur Kunst), Tim Griffin (Artforum), Melissa Gronlund (Afterall), Eva Karcher (Vogue), Koen Kleijn (De Groene Amsterdammer), Sven Lütticken (Prof.), Niklas Maak (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Sina Najafi (Cabinet), Ho Tzu Nyen (Art Asia Pacific), Chantal Pontbriand (Parachute), Dirk Pültau (De Witte Raaf), Mark Rappolt (ArtReview), Dieter Roelstraete (Afterall), Margriet Schavemaker (Prof.), Edgar Schmitz (Kunstforum International), Simon Sheikh (Prof.), Judy Freya Sibayan (Ctrl+P), Nick Stillman (Bomb), Richard Streitmatter-Tran (diacritic.org), Jordan Strom (The Fillip Review), Pelin Tan (Muhtelif), Eric Troncy (Frog), Jan Verwoert (frieze), Micha³ Woliñski (Piktogram). [All names tbc.]

Topics
Each day has an overarching theme, which is then subdivided into more precise topics and questions:
• Thursday – Expectations, looking at questions such as editorial authority - who decides what we read about whom? Can criticism be taught? What does the public expect from art criticism, and what of artists’ expectations?
• Friday – Positions, exploring the critic’s role in relation to the artist, to the audience, and to the art market, questioning the possibilities for criticality and independence in a field increasingly dominated by advertising.
• Saturday – Contexts, examining the conditions that are necessary for art criticism to flourish – what is the key to an enduring art magazine? What possibilities can be created by DIY criticism, and how are new media changing the audience for art criticism?

Education
In addition to the three days of the symposium, Witte de With Education is organizing a masterclass that is open to students and young professionals, given by Tim Griffin (editor in chief of Artforum International). There is also a closed workshop run by Melissa Gronlund (editor of Afterall) with students from several Dutch universities.

Publication
Elements of each symposia comprising Rotterdam Dialogues: Critics, Curators, Artists will be compiled in a publication to appear in mid 2009. It will feature contributions by many of the speakers, but also by invited observers and by participants in the workshop and masterclass.

Special events
Parallel to Rotterdam Dialogues: the Critics, Witte de With has scheduled three special events, which are also open to people not attending the symposium:
• Thursday 9 October, 6 p.m. Award ceremony for the Prize for Young Dutch Art Criticism, an initiative of Witte de With, The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB) and de Appel. Location: Zaal de Unie, Mauritsweg 34, Rotterdam (Language: Dutch), www.jongekunstkritiek.net, free entry.
• Friday 10 October, 7:30 p.m. Book launch of Diedrich Diederichsen’s book On (Surplus) Value in Art, the first of the Reflections series published by Witte de With and Sternberg Press. Reception at Witte de With in the presence of the author, free entry.
• Saturday 11 October, 8:30 p.m. OFF the PAGE performance program and party at DSPS / DE PLAYER, Tolhuisstraat 107, Rotterdam. Entrance 6€, free entry to symposium ticket holders. Performers to be announced. www.stdsps.nl

Practical information
Time: Registration daily from 12:30 p.m. Program starts daily at 1:30 p.m.
Tickets: 1 day ticket: €15 (€10*), 3 day ticket: € 40 (€25*)
* reduction for <18, >65, students, Friends of Witte de With
Reservations: reservations@wdw.nl
Language: English
Location: Witte de With, 3rd floor

Rotterdam Dialogues: Critics, Curators, Artists is conceived and co-ordinated by Zoë Gray, Nicolaus Schafhausen and Ariadne Urlus.

Support
Rotterdam Dialogues: Critics, Curators, Artists is generously supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, VSBfonds and SNS REAAL Fonds. Witte de With is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Culture and the City of Rotterdam.

Censorship at the 3rd Gouangzhou Triennial

AN OPEN LETTER Concerning Censorship at the 3RD Guangzhou Triennial

We are troubled that a unilateral decision has been taken to censor our work without any attempt at dialogue or even without informing us about how, by whom or why such a decision was made. This censorship is further egregious in that museum visitors and viewers of our (curtailed) work are not being informed that any such censorship is in operation. In true Kafkaesque fashion, censorship rears its cowardly head while hiding its traces and its train of command.

During the private opening and the first day of the public opening we––and a research curator––made repeated requests through an assistant for a meeting or dialog with the museum director (whom we indirectly learned was the one making this decision). These were not heeded. At no point did the Director indicate any interest in trying to discuss the matter with the research curator or with us. However, the video was allowed to be shown during the opening afternoon, and has been turned off again. In retrospect, this afternoon of projection appears to be a calculated act to temporarily appease us.

At no point in the process of vetting and finally commissioning the project did any of the organizers indicate that there might be any issues or potential issues with our project, even though we had clearly stated our intention of showing appropriated pornography. To quote our catalogue statement,
"Inside, the Bed–Inn is haunted by projections of bodies engaged in sex acts, appropriated from a mix of footage––from … 1960's 'underground' films to contemporary internet porn. One manifestation of the 'sexual revolution,' pornography was seen by its advocates as a utopian civil right, alongside free love and free speech…. Here, in the Bed-Inn, … this space of virtual activity awaits the insertion of the actual bodies of audience members."
That this 'sexual revolution' is associated predominantly with the West (though feminism and women's rights are manifested globally) provides further impetus for examining its legacy from the vantage of a rapidly changing China.

Our installation, admittedly, is provocative, but we wanted to engage with the exhibition's contested theme and title: Farewell to Postcolonialism. We have taken the subject seriously, especially given our histories that we are both from previously colonized countries that even now grapple with the throes of post- and neo-colonialism. Our belief that histories and geographical locations literally mark the human body impelled us to create a work that examines the body as marked by history and as carrier of infectious ideas and contagious actions. The video component consists of the kind of footage that has been multiply received: celebrated as liberatory, as spiritual even, privately consumed and/or publicly condemned. Our point is precisely that such material is contextualized by its and the body's relationship to power, and in this case is further inflected by its historical relationship to the 1960s' liberation struggles of the individual and collective body.

Our installation title, 2008 Springtimes for John and Yoko: the Bed-Inn, references both the remarkable film, 79 Springtimes of Ho Chi Minh, by Cuban revolutionary filmmaker Santiago Alvarez, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono's legendary "Bed-In" protests against the Vietnam War. As discourses against censorship, authoritarianism and abuses of power, they illustrate that iconic period of world-wide optimistic political foment, popular resistance and radical politics that has since come to represent a lost time of possibilities. Our awareness of how differently such discourses have played out ideologically and materially in China and in the USA are also what inform this installation.

We should not have been surprised, but it is nevertheless ironic that a work ruminating on historical memory has been switched off through an act of enforced amnesia. This act removes the viewers' choice, not least by removing the viewers' knowledge of a choice to be made. The video is projected behind curtains; it would have been simple to provide a warning sign in front of the curtains indicating the video's subject matter, allowing the viewer their own choice on whether or not to proceed.

Also ironically, our work is situated within the exhibition and catalogue section, "Free Radicals." Not so free, presumably. The curatorial statement draws attention to the "'political correctness at large' that is the result of the power play of multiculturalism, identity politics and post-colonial discourse." Yet here is an example of an artwork engaging those same discourses that is shut down by a far more insidious form of "political correctness"––one enacted by an autocratic institution that professes its liberal leanings. What "tyranny of the Other" (again from the curatorial statement) do we need to contend with when the institution shuts down a space of difference, thereby barring the mere entrance of the Other?

We don't want to form knee-jerk accusations against "authoritarian regimes," since we are well aware that such acts of censorship occur in so-called "democracies," where the tender sensibilities of citizens are paternalistically protected. In the case here, Wang Huangsheng, the museum director, states in the exhibition catalogue that,
"It is our sincere hope that your visual perceptions can get sharpened and imported by thinking, and your thinking can be further powered in your enquiring eyes."
What sincere hope can there be when blinders prevent vision and the possibilities for thinking are shut down? While we understand the need for local considerations, especially given that regionally the Guangdong Museum is known to be culturally open, we are dismayed that such openness has not extended to any direct communication with us.

We call on the museum to reinstate the installation in its full, intended form. More than that, we wish to open a dialogue with the museum, the curators and other artists about how these questions might be, if not resolved, at least addressed. As artists, we expect to be part of decision-making processes that profoundly intervene with our works' relationship to the audience, especially in exhibitions such as this that profess to develop new forms of cultural and social engagement.

This was posted by Allan deSouza and trauma, interrupted artist Yong Soon Min, September 2008 at the trauma, interrupted e-group. I am posting this for posterity, albeit very much delayed-May Datuin

The Current State of Gender Studies and Art – Re-thinking Globalism

International Symposium
The Current State of Gender Studies and Art – Re-thinking Globalism
Time: December 14, 2008, 10:00 AM – 6:30 PM
Organized by Grant-in Aid for Scientific Research;Women Artists and Visual Representations
in 20th Century: Memories of War and Diaspora in Asia (Scientific Research on Priority Areas B 20310156)and co-hosted by the Image and Gender Research Group

Place: Musashi University Bldg. 8, Room 8702, Japan
(For directions please visit http://www2.musashi.ac.jp/english/)

Schedule of Events:

10¡§00-10:05 Opening remarks by Professor Megumi Kitahara (Art History, Osaka University)

10¡§05-12¡§00 Session One: The State of the Field – Gender Studies and Art Around the World

(Presentations from Image and Gender, No. 8, 2008)

Moderator: Megumi Kitahara

Presenters:
Kanako Kuroda (Chiba University)
Shinbo Kiyono (Chiba University) Study of Italian Women Artists in the Last Half Century
Fukuma Kayo (Chiba University) Exhibition on Russian Women Artists
Ishida Rumiko (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography) Chinese Art on the Spot
Izumi Nakajima (Hitotsubashi University) Art and Gender in UK- Interview with Griselda Pollock
Kim Hyeshin (Gakushuin University) Gender Related Exhibitions and Studies in Korean Contemporary Art
Comments by Izumi Nakajima followed by discussion

12¡§00-13¡§00¡¡ Break for Lunch

13¡§00-15¡§10 Session 2: Gender studies and Art in Asia – Current Situation

Moderator: Reiko Kokatsu (Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts)

Presenters:
Somporn Rodboon (Professor, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai) A Report on Contemporary Women¡Çs Art in Thailand, Translation by Rebecca Jenison

Hyesook Jeon (Ewha Womans University, Seoul) Paradoxical Criticism in the Web and Practice of the Existential Nomadism: Rethinking Globalism through and Analysis of the Works of Two Women Artists, Translation by Hyeshin Kim

Rawanchaikul Toshiko (Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka) Women Artists in the Collection of Fukuoka Asian Art Museum¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡

15¡§10-15¡§30 Break

15¡§30-17¡§10 Session 3: War, Memory and Art

Moderator: Kim Hyeshin

Performance by artist Tari Ito: I Remember You

Presenters:

Miho Nakanishi (NPO, Osaka Arts Aporia) Exchange with Women Artists in West Mindanao – ¡ÆWar¡Ç as an Everyday Topic of Conversation

Reiko Kokatsu Women and Art in the Philippines – on ¡ÈTrauma, interrupted¡É (2007)and others
Chizuko Sakamoto (Yonsei University, Seoul) The Aura of Experience and Representation Surrounding the ¡ÆComfort Women¡Ç Issue

17¡§10-17¡§30 Break

17¡§30-18¡§30 Closing Discussion between panelists from afternoon sessions

Moderator: Mayumi Kagawa (Musashi University, Tokyo)

Guest Discussant: Lisa Yoneyama (University of California, San Diego)

18:40~ Reception

Imelda Cajipe Endaya reaps honors in New York

New York City, New York – November 17, 2008 – Athena Santos Magcase Lopez, president of the Society of Philippine American Artists announces that Imelda Cajipe Endaya was awarded last November 8, 2008 with the American Society of Contemporary Artists (ASCA),Irwin & Florence Zlowe Award for her mixed media work on paper and textiles "Forest of the South," exhibited at its 90th Annual Art Exhibition. The award is one of ASCA's highest certificates of honor which recognize awardees' superior achievement in visual arts career. ASCA is a national organization of artists with juried membership, and is based in New York City. Judges of the award included Dede Young, Curator of contemporary Art at the Neuberger Museum in Purchase , NY; Dr. Jose Manuel Rodeiro, Art Historian and Curator at the New Jersey City University, NY; and Lura Vookles, Art Curator at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY. ASCA's President Emeritus, Harriet Febland, referred to Cajipe Endaya, an artist well recognized in the Philippines and Asia-Pacific contemporary art world, as "an artist in her prime."

Meanwhile, Ms. Endaya recently concluded her group exhibition at "Collage Logic" at the Anne Street Gallery, the prestigious gallery in Newburgh, New York, devoted to contemporary and innovative art, and which is also part of the city's ongoing cultural renewal movement. "Collage Logic" reviewed in the arts section of the New York Times, where art critic Benjamin Gennochio wrote that Imelda “collages together maps, candy wrappers and a variety of textiles to create works that reflect on childhood and, somewhat more obliquely, feminist issues.”

Ms. Endaya was guest artist of the Department of Art History of the Skidmore College, at their campus in Saratoga Springs, NY, a school described by Newsweek as one the 25 new ivies. Ms. Endaya delivered her artist's talk focusing on her art and artist's role: "Women, the Self, and the Other." at the Skidmore's Tang Museum, with an audience of students, faculty and artists who were stimulated to learn and discuss about Philippine history and culture expressed through Endaya's paintings, mixed media, installations.

Imelda Cajipe Endaya’s life work the past 30 years has been consistently clustered along the themes of cultural identity, gender, race, nation, migration, displacement, and globalization from the distinct point of an enlightened Filipina visual artist. She was awarded the Centennial Honors for the Arts by the Republic of the Philippines in 1999. She has gained recognition in the Asia-Pacific contemporary art world for the distinct womanly visual language and statements in her art, as well as cultural leadership in women’s advocacy.