Lines of sites: How Pinoyprintmakers Abide by the Contemporary Notion of Fatherlessness

Exhibition Essay by Jose Santos P. Ardivilla

The image of genealogy is usually that of a thick-trunked tree that has deep roots tethered to a past as they help sprout forth sprawling branches. However, in 2018 when the Association of Pinoyprintmakers commemorated their 50thanniversary, there was a curious video installation showing animated lineages of printmakers across the years. Instead of a tap root with the entrenched but radiating smaller roots and branches cover a certain vastness, the “parentage” of printmakers prove to be quite quizzical if not transgressive. In this 2018 animated video art entitled “Genealogy” by RJ Camacho and Isabel Sophia Weber, the printmakers are clustered in nebulous forms that overlap each other creating active forms that truly do not coalesce or harden. This is the perfect metaphor for the genealogy of the Pinoy printmakers when many of us come from different places, from different persuasions, different approaches. Some of us can be quite grounded in meticulous tradition whereas there are those among us who freely and eagerly dive into the motions of experimentation. Such is the connecting thread among the general practice of printmaking in the Philippines.

This year, the Association of Pinoyprintmakers (AP) disavows this obsession among many artists and organizations for a patrilineal beginning. The Philippine art market’s penchant to label certain art movements as to have sprung from a patriarchal ground zero would have many of us read exhibition essays, catalogues pointing out that so and so is the father of this or that. Such an approach would cater to quite a misogynist notion that art begins from a parent, specifically, a father. In this group exhibition entitled On Site: Printmaking Open Studio Series, the specter of the singular paternal is troubled. The printmakers become “fatherless” in the sense that we are among multiple emergences throughout varied disciplines and different philosophies. In a way, there should be comfort of veering away from this obsession with starting from just one as quite limited and hampers any discussion of “errant” children. After all, for an art form to have a “father,” it would assume there would be assigned inheritors and arbiters of the art. What of those who do not “belong?” What about those who are distant from the center? Are they rendered orphaned ergo, designated as “less” or, even worse, token aberrations?

The multiplicity of the sites embarked in this exhibition is to showcase the different practices and methods from different printmakers from different parts of the Philippines. In such multiple sites, these different organizations would have members who are tethered to the Association of Pinoyprintmakers, but there is no corralling of membership. After all, the ways of the father is that of gatekeeping, by disallowing “problematic” persons, frowning upon those who do not toe the patriarchal line. After all, to be a truly contemporary art movement, verticality should not be insisted whereas there are hierarchies imposed to curtail unsanctioned movements. Though there are a number of senior printmakers in this group, seniority here is to serve as a point of aspiration and approach and not that of a staunch dictation of what should be. This exhibition is about the horizontal spreading of influences wherein the area becomes wider and not higher.

In On Site: Printmaking Open Studios, we urge everybody, both the printmakers and the exhibition visitors to bear witness on how it is to see that the different lines that connect our practice are not rigid, but that of multiple vectors of trajectories. The point is no longer to look for a source, because that would mean to answer to many claimants and contention, but to see what it means to be contemporary and relevant to these days of overwhelming paces of images. Printmaking has been in existence for centuries and in this exhibit, we offer you a glimpse on the stakes of printmaking for today and that printmaking is not shut out for tomorrow.

This is what the contemporary demands: multiple sites, multiple lines emerging from those sites. This assures that printmaking shall not be relegated into the doldrums of obsolescence but still in the flux of becoming. This is why that “Genealogy” artwork from the 2018 Tirada is composed of floating forms that elide and inform other forms into existence. Such fluid extractions from the different printmakers, from different point of view, from different practices show that this is an exhibition of printmakers with arms akimbo that march to the different possibilities and the multiple dynamisms that would assure our places in the future.

IntrusIons as activism

Happy monsters

The front slash [“/”] marks the spot

By Jose Santos P. Ardivilla

Please look at how the name of this exhibit is designed. “Space/Place” as a combined unit has a very demonstrative look on the very premise of this exhibition of the works by members of the Association of Pinoyprintmakers. The word “Space” is bold, a solid towering verticality. By its side is a slant with “Place” that is of lighter weight and is underscored by the front slash. The dynamism between the slanted “place” and the front slash indicates (1) an underlined emphasis of place; and (2) an act of plunging; literally digging into “Space.” This demonstrates that space is the field and place plows into it – space is the physicality of location, of coordinates, of geography; whereas place is the driving operation by people, culture, and society of giving or deriving meaning through how we navigate and through how we create a meaningful connection to a plot of land, a spot at a corner or sprawling vistas.

In this exhibition, printmakers assemble their ways of seeing to establish senses of place. After all, from the call for this exhibition, Michel Foucault’s Heterotopia is the pivot. To engage with this, one must situate that heterotopia is distant from utopia. It would be easy to see “utopia” as a singular location of paradise, of order, of efficacy, of bliss. One must be reminded that “utopia” is Latin for “nowhere.” Utopia is not a place. Whereas “hetero” is Latin for “another.” This exhibit hinges on the many possibilities, on the assertions of “another” places. In this “another,” possible meanings and ways of being are aplenty.

Heterotopia is to disrupt a convention, or a standard insisted by those that seek to dominate spaces. Heterotopia means there are ways beyond just one perspective. Heterotopia asks the printmakers to question how they embody space, how they place their visions, their forms, their thoughts. The works here take up space and proclaim who they are or what they are capable of. In the space of 20” x 20”, these are prints that are proof of gestures of mark-making; like setting up coordinates in what used to be an empty space. After all, printmaking, as an act, is place-making through place-sensing. Printmakers sense the weight of the paper, the smell and the sound of the thickness or tackiness of the ink, the weight driven down to press the images on the paper.

The prints themselves become emergent places on an otherwise blank space of the paper. In this exhibit, the Association’s printmakers engage with memory, fantasy, identity, and materials to rouse their many navigations of making sense of the space they weave through. Going through the exhibition, one will be encountering vulnerabilities of those that believe space can be an act of personal revelations. Some prints speak of memories, both personal and historical which point to paths that led the printmakers to where they are now. Some works here speak of printmaking’s capacity to be tethered in tradition and to be fluid enough to enmesh itself into contemporary spaces of production. The works here are utterances on what the places these printmakers have sought and have tried to make sense in their lives.

Circling back to the name “Space/Place,” the forward slash [“/”] proves to be a devise of a staking or laying claim. Many assume the front slash [“/”] means demarcation, boundaries. In this exhibit’s case, it is a point of synchronicity or a means to overlap each other. It is a connective tissue that fuses “space” and “place” together. Both are not the same, but both are shared. That is, one is less without the other. Space/Place are not opposites. Space/Place are not two sides of the same coin. Space/Place are a way of becoming. Space/Place are to be linked much like a way of claiming/ a way of taking up space/ a way of setting up a place.

“Kung bakit may lindol sa natutulog na bundok”(Why it quakes at a sleeping mountain)

Today’s not a good day. I received a really bad email. I am posting this as a means of countering such negativity. This is my way of not catastrophizing.

And I do it with art…

I found a vintage postcard of what looks to be a Northern indigenous person with a tray of skulls. Postcard was from the mid 20th century. It had a caption “head hunter, Manila, Philippines.”

I scanned the postcard and blew it up and printed it largescale. Since i have paltry space, I stuck the print at the door for me to work on. Then I drew all over it to counter the “clean” or easily-recognizable image of the colonial archives. I cite the “bundok” as a methodology approaching the archives. What are archives for? For organization of information. The subject is reduced as an object to be classified. I would have wanted to be accepted at an artist residence to expound on this visual countering of the violence of the archive but I am not so fortunate. I see the “bundok” not as a place but as an operation of troubling authority. And the archive is the receptacle for an authority that drives its own narratives and insists on its own supremacy.

I will be in for some encounters with the archives soon. I flying out of Lubbock tomorrow for my research and to write as well. Who knows what and who i will encounter.

Proof of Life

I guess you can call this a life

Media Mappa Mundi (Middle Map of the World)

The cover is inspired by Medieval Europe’s Mappa Mundi or the Map of the World as a legacy of world-building, connection, engagement, and delineation of places and positionalities. The Latin word “Media” is “Middle” or a hub of transmissions and receptions whose currencies are information, mythmaking, and traces. The concept of legacy is that of a tracing from sources to utterances and counter-utterances.  Media is a point of transitions and pivots. How legacy media is seen now is through the series of trajectories which has engaged momentum for new settlements of ways of being. Such settlements can be traced with maps that is more conceptual rather than locational. The Medieval European Mappa Mundi is not an accurate representation of the places but it is a sweeping look on enforcing power. The maps are littered with civilizations and monstrosities that create a sense of place where movements are controlled. Such is the legacy of the Mappa Mundi as an interstitial point of being, becoming, and fading.

Hanging on is good for character

Been a while since I last posted here, but I have been posting as coping mechanisms in Facebook and twitter. I am in limbo right now in terms of being able to stay here and finish my PhD pursuit. It seems unreal when it is now winding down.

But i have been productive, I think, since the last parts of 2022 up to now. I hope to keep on making more art from here on out.

Gas Station thoughts

Back in 2005, I flew to America because my US Visa was about to expire and I thought this may the last time I see America. As part of the ways of a Filipino living via the kindness of others in a foreign land, I had to attend some Fil-Am gatherings. Scratch that, I thought I'd be speaking to Fil-Ams my age, but I was relegated to entertain via conversation a bunch of first generation Fil-Ams who flew to America from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. I remember being spoken to by a gentleman, you know the type, garrulous and unhinged in his opinion, who says he knows a lot of people. He told me (1) to stay and he can hook me up a job at a gas station, (2) that he knows some young lady who would want to marry me. "Asawa mo isteytsayd! ayaw mo niyan!? sa gandang lalake mo, di ka mahihirapan dito hekhekhekhek."

I think my mother failed to inform them beforehand that I am not of that persuasion. Anyway, it is amazing to observe the conversations of the first-generation Fil-Ams in Anaheim. So, I was offered a job at a gas station; and then the topic veered off to a former Filipino movie star heartthrob who emigrated to America to become a gasoline station worker. And I remember the air of contempt. Not for the job, but for the actor. How he was so "mayabang" in Manila and was then eating humble pie in California.

So there is this persistent vision of America as an "equalizer" for most Filipinos. I say most because the Marcoses and many of their fellow plundering cohorts were here. Imee Marcos, for all her luxury and access, reportedly was a truant university student. Maybe following her mom at Studio 54? But for the rest of the Pinoys here, it is not in comfort but to live in between exhaustion and the fear and threat of agony of poverty.

For Señoritos like yours truly, it was not a rude wake up call. I was expecting this, but a hilarious grappling over life. And is it rude if I sort of enjoy it? I mean, sure, I wish I had time to learn how to cook before I left, but here I am with a bowl of heated leftover pasta wondering what went wrong that it does not taste like Manang Padak's masterpiece.

Of course, there is always a threat. The pandemic and the insecurity over my situation here. Nobody really knows what's going to happen. I mean, nobody can really tell us how to live through a pandemic as an international student. But makes me wonder, what my life would be like, had I taken the plunge and stayed here in 2005, married a woman, and worked at the gasoline station.

A Sense of Place Via Roots and Routes

Finding a sense of place while stuck in a global pandemic is a confrontation of one’s loss in movement.  So, amidst this global tumult of an illness that has forced many of us into isolation, quarantine, lockdown, how can one establish a sense of place when one is immobile?  This predicates my notion that a “place” or more accurately, a “sense of place” is not fixed.  For this paper, my sense of place is a sense of displacement.  Place is not just a concrete geography of clear-cut boundaries, but cultural cartography which is always in  shifting sands.  In my sense of place, I had to go through history and photos which I did not witness but am a legacy of it. This sense of place is embedded in a discussion between bodies of different times and of different movements.

As I am stuck in my dismal place in Lubbock, I decided to read up on diaspora and Filipino migrant laborers in the West Coast in the early 20th Century. I am here because of the bodies of people that were here before me. Filipinos have been in these shores since the late 1500s from enslaved sailors who jump-shipped to the current droves of nurses.  Yet, I focus on farm workers. This finding a sense of place for me starts with viewing of archives of one of America’s preeminent anthropologist Dean Worcester of his photographs of the Philippines in the turn of the 20th Century.  The Philippines was a “protectorate” of the USA and the government sent over American scholars and soldiers to study, plot out and pacify the islands.  In the cache of photos there are clear demonstrations of differences as a visual point of justification of American presence in our islands.  “Inquiring into photographs begins with knowing that I am always negotiating relationships, reevaluating purposes, and negotiating transitions as I live alongside my participants’ experiences (Bach, 2007, p.290).”  The “participants” here are how the Filipinos  were documented in these archival photos.  They are photographed as if specimens of an alien species or documented like criminals for a mug shot.  There was a particular photo that compelled me of an American soldier sitting at the rice paddies posing Filipino farmers who are standing up while at the corner is a dead body of an insurgent farmer This is like one of those hunting photos of white imperialists in India and in Africa wherein they pose with their game as their servants look on. (See: https://webapps.lsa.umich.edu/umma/exhibits/Worcester%202012/Zoom/58B034.jpg )

The dead body on the farmland brings me back to the notion of modern American agriculture and food security.  That there are notions of disposable bodies for the “farms” to thrive.  I shift from past to the present in this investigation of place.  In these fraught and anxious times of the global pandemic, food is at a cultural flashpoint.  While many Americans are fighting over rolls of tissue paper, I look anxiously over at the produce section and am comforted that, for now, there is still enough vegetables available.  Then as I look at the lush greens of the shelves and aisles, I think of the immigrant farmers that are paid a pittance to keep us fed and have a semblance of comfort in these unsure times.  America may be a superpower with technology moving in breakneck speed, with all the innovations produced in this nation; but many Americans are now realizing that there is a threat to food security is a thing.  Food insecurity is a way of life for most of the population from where I am from. 

In the early 20th Century, American corporations transported boatloads of Filipinos to plantations in Hawaii, in vineyards and farmlands in California, in tanneries in Alaska.  Among those who fed Americans at that time were Filipino pickers of fruits and vegetable.  There was an American Agricultural official who said that the Filipinos were perfect for this work because we are short and are used to stooping to the ground which is a pain for the typical white American farmer. This was a “naturalization” of an imagined body based on difference.  This is currently demonstrated on how many Americans now openly attack Asian bodies as sources of pathogens; that our weird culinary customs have caused this global pandemic.  This is “naturalization” of an imagined episode that is being operated on difference.  Now, you may ask, why am I shifting from the past to the present and trying to connect narratives then with current events?  This is how I see how things are: networks of information that are intricately connected.  “We braid strands of place and space, memory and history, ancestry and (mixed) race, language and literacy, familiar and strange, with strands of tradition, ambiguity, becoming, (re)creation and renewal into métissage (Hasebe-Lutd et al., 2008, p.58).” And by “here” is not just a physical planting of a location, but to be at crossroads in which I can travel several paths because the road is not flat but is a series of lattices that I weave through.  These lattices are sourced from history books, from old photographs, and a willful act of imagination.  In this sense of place of where I am at, my narrative is thus a part of the tapestry of whispered history of a hushed people.  After all, “to these ends, we weave together our autobiographical texts, creating a métissage that simultaneously locates points of affinity while also remaining mindful of differences in context, history, and memory (Hasebe-Lutd et al., 2008, p.57).”

In my inquiry of place, I take a look at positionality not just of myself, but of migrant workers across the generations, working for the American dream.  I am just a student of history who is a political cartoonist and I do not make grand claims of representation or legitimization of one particular vision.  In a way, I see this as perhaps curating a conversation between these photographs, and try to listen to voices that were silenced, still are being silenced.  “In performing our subjectivities, we assert the relevance, the legitimacy, indeed the necessity of including the full range of our humanness in our work of re/membering ourselves in/to the world, embracing the world, with all our relations (Hasebe-Lutd et al., 2008, p.68).” I made a series of works dealing with displacement, dislocation, and land. An assemblage of allegories.

These works are inspired by cartography and the sights I saw up in the air as I glanced out the window and looked below on the tracks of land in the Philippines and in America.  I employed layering when I painted this because there is no flat surface in place but undulating lines and emerging topographies.  I integrated photographs and cut them up as image transfers, thereby transforming them into “skins” on the wooden panel and not just a field of representation but a kind of sensation to trace the textures of history.  I employed glazing as part of the obscuring but not really eradicating such voices from below.  As a cartoonist, I rendered line art as means of cartographic linearity sustaining and questioning borders.  The colors I employed are that of Filipino skin (which many of us say is the color of the earth in which we source our sustenance) with various eruptions of rashes, wounds, and bluish and greenish veins like patches of forests about to be razed for more farmlands and streams of blue of bringing stories to where I am. A place is not a location but overlapping zones of stories one would notice if one were to be still enough to listen.

Bach, H. (2007). Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology. (D. J. Clandinin, Ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Ltd.

Hasebe-Ludt, E., Chambers, C., Oberg, A., & Leggo, C. (2008). Being with A/r/tography. (S. Springgay, R. L. Irwin, C. Leggo, & P. Gouzouasis, Eds.). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

“In the Early Days of Escalation”

(11” x 14”. Mixed Media on Wood;)

This was inspired on how language is utilized in our colonial experience. This was from a photo of a classroom of young Filipinos dressed in their best. Spain did not really impart fully their language. America gave us English. USA does not have a national language. We have two: Filipino and English. It is English that unites our archipelago with more than 120 languages which culturally try to upend each other.

There’s a good boy

(11” x 14”. Mixed Media on Wood)

This was inspired by an archival photo of a store in the West Coast that has a sign: “Absolutely No Dogs and Filipinos Allowed.” The dogs take precedence. Cute fact: American soldiers called us “dogeaters” in the early 20th century. Now, in the early 21st century and covid-19, you have some people spray painting “Death 2 Dogeaters” in front of Asian houses in Australia.

Perfect for Stoopin’

(11” x 14”. Mixed Media on Wood)

An American Agricultural expert in the early 20th century once mentioned that since the Filipinos’ short stature, we are more “natural” for picking fruit and crops. This relegating our stature not just of our physical difference but that is emanating of the stature in society in general wherein given the waves of economic migrations globally, Filipinos are stereotyped as “lowly” workers for jobs many people do not like for its proximity to filth. (i.e. nursing, caregivers in the present-day).

On your way to live like a king

(11” x 14”. Mixed Media on Wood)

Many migrant communities have enacted the narrative of diaspora which is to look for a better place. In a sense, this is the American Dream, to be your own person, to make a lot of money, and thus return to your homeland triumphant which is a promise of many recruiters who go to the Philippines to look for willing and able workers. Many of these workers’ lives are on that road looking for those streets paved with gold. Some may find semblance of success, many do not.

The Decade That Was

What do we call this decade that is about to leave us? The 2010s? The 10s? The tense?

I call it the decade when I shed tears in a classroom.

It was 2013 and nothing was really solid. I just finished my MA Art Studies and decided to take an MFA (when a lot of people have scoffed at this and derided me for not taking the PhD right there and then). I was not employed by UP Fine Arts and was on the verge on returning to the cubicled existence of corporate life.

I was enrolled at UP Diliman Chancellor Michael Tan’s Anthropology course. In one class, he was discussing rituals regarding connections and self-realization. He mentioned that this is not a new-fangled thing from the West like what we see in many Self-Help sections in bookstores. He said that the “self” has different iterations in many cultures.

He then mentioned a certain Tibetan ritual of “feeding the demon.” Dr. Tan said that it was a different form of “exorcism;” whereas the usual form of exorcism was to expunge the demon from your body in a violent manner. But the demon here is not merely a supernatural entity in possession of your body but the demon here is something more intricate (like a part of you), insidious like insecurity, hatred, fear of failure, resentment, anger, anxiety, self-loathing, self-pity, etc. The demon here is obsession which is ego-clinging. The demon manifests because of us. It will not exist without us thinking it into existence. The demon is an idea of our shortcomings and of our desires and, with it, the frustrations of not attaining those desires.

One way to deal with this demon is to feed it; which may sound counterintuitive as we may have been culturally programmed to expel the demon. Dr. Tan mentioned it was an intricate Buddhist ritual involving being solitary in a quiet room and three chairs. One chair is for you, the other chair is for the demon, the other chair is for the “ally.” Please note that I type this from my memory and I may have forgotten some details about the ritual itself which was just discussed quickly but that class has a lingering effect on me.

Dr. Tan said that you sit on one chair and the two empty chairs facing you. On one empty chair you imagine your demon….what does your resentment look like? Why does it look like that? What does it want from you? And this is the surprising bit, you stand up and sit on the chair where your demon sits and then you become the demon and you look at the chair where you originally sat. Now, with the demon’s eyes, look at yourself and ask yourself why this demon has so much power over you. You begin to understand your demon and its hungers. What would trigger the hunger of the demon when it sees you? You ask your demon what would it need. If you know its needs, you know what to feed it. If your demon is stress, then maybe it needs to feed on relaxation. If your demon is an ex, then maybe you need to think of happier times when you were really in love with your ex so as not to really make that ex an overwhelming persistent memory of hate. If your demon is your father dying, then maybe you feed it with the acceptance of things beyond your control.

Remember, we create our own demons, ergo we should know what makes them hungry.

You go back to where you originally sat and then imagine a glass or a plate then you feed the demon. You feed the demon with your answers to the questions of what makes them hungry and how will they feel satiated. (On a side note, this is Buddhism; remember the main tenet of this religion is that desire is the obstacle to our salvation which is breaking free of the cycle of reincarnation into lives of pain and want. That breaking away is called “Nirvana.” The triumph over desire is to be satisfied (Visual Cue: take a look on how the Buddhas are portrayed in Sukhothai Art: the Buddha has lowered eyelids and has a slight smile….many art historians cite this is the “look” of satisfaction exemplified by the Buddha who ultimately won over base desires.)

Once the demon is full it will either disappear or change into an ally and take its seat on the third chair in which you and the ally look at each other and discuss what needs to be done. This way, you wrest your own demons by admitting they exist and asking them what they want. In a way, these are no longer your demons but a needy version of yourself. That part hit me.

Anger is not my fuel. Anger is not my companion. I learned that anger is a process that can resituate itself from a massive landslide…if you let it…or you can feed your anger with generous heaps of gratitude when you learn to see and realize that this anger is a lesson that was ignored.

At that point of realization in that class discussion, I surprised myself by have tears streak down my face. I could not remember when was the last time I cried in class. Was it in Kinder 1 in St. Benedict’s Learning Center when I could not tie my shoelaces? That situation is galaxies apart from the reason I shed tears in that classroom in my mid 30s.

Imagine my horror because I was crying. And if you know me, I usually sit at the front and center and there I was with my tear-streaked face. I looked out of the window of that Palma Hall classroom trying to ignore Dr. Tan’s probing glances. I remember it was night-time but I could see hints of greenery outside. I was breathing heavily so as to control my breaths to prevent me from having a full-on meltdown.

I am not Buddha. I will never conquer desires. My demons will never go away. I have learned to deal with that. This was the moment in the decade when I learned to befriend my demons and take them with me as reminders of what needs to be done. The demons tell me that they are hungry because my ego and myopic selfishness make them hungry. If I ignore my demons, they will win.

This is the decade where I learn the quiet power of a confrontation; not based on aggression, but based on determination to see what enables the demons to come out and play and overwhelm me…overwhelm us.

So, that was my decade…wherein I learn to stop, feed, learn from my demons and walk with my demons and see how far this will take me.

Dalagang Bukid series

So, my Pinoy neighbors who are PhD students for Plant and Soil Science invited me to go to Texas Tech’s farms at the next city of New Deal, Texas. We were supposed to collect samples of Cotton shrubs to be documented at their laboratory.

it was Sunday morning at 830am when we left Lubbock. i hitched a ride with them. when we got there, i was given gloves and clippers to cut the cotton plants at the base and stuff them carefuflly into canvas bags. all in all, i walked just 2km. which is less than my usual walk. however, i did not have to bend down and cut plants and rip the weeds out as well. so i ended up pretty sweaty. 

i agreed to do this because (1) once my Fulbright grant runs out (all of us have just two years), i would need to work on summers. the American system of utilizing hampas lupa graduate students is a problem pegged on labor exploitation. we graduate students who are traching assistants do not get salaries for three months of the year. ergo, we need to look for other jobs. since i am an international student, i cannot work outside the university. since i am both an international student and a school of art student, work availability for me is severely limited. so, why not try out working at a farm hoeing and collecting samples.

(2) my proposed dissertation is about Filipino migrant farm laborers in the West Coast during the early 20th century. i’d like to experience a tiny glimpse of the hardship of their labors. and given that the Philippines has a violent strings of narratives pertaining to land rights, this is my way of getting close to the issue. i can hear what some of my activist friends are thinking that this is a feeble attempt and not even close to the Philippine experience. i agree with them, but this is my decision to process information and i am in a position of severe disadvantage here. i am not one of those activists that went up the mountain and then come down for the occasional foot spa. If i did this in the Philippines, my privileges are still in full display. here? i am nobody. worse, less than nobody....an outsider who can be easily shot because i would be mistaken for an illegal.

(3) agriculture and farm workers made America and made the Philippines. my study on the Philippine figure in Editorial Cartoons is Juan dela Cruz. he is a farmer.  and today was the longest time i spent in my adult life crouching over soil and pulling out weeds and collecting samples. this is STILL a fairly EASIER job compared to farm workers all over the world, but it gives me a different point of view that i do not want to assume anymore. i need to live it, even for just a bit.

(4) it is interesting that the plot assigned to us is cotton given the bloody history of this white object collected by blacks for white landowners. we were discussing after our work how come the black slaves did not rise against the white plantation owners. i am sure there have been uprisings but you have to remember that the slavery of the American south is fed by religion. the most conservative and religious parts of America are in the south. it was religion that programmed the black slaves since birth to make them feel inadequate and only labor can be their salvation. that labor, suffering, is part of their purification process under the auspices of the white slave owners who usually facilitate and administer the religious needs of their property. it must be said, too, that religion is a source of many a slave’s emancipation and assertion of their rights.

it was just a strange feeling to have the weight of history, racialized differences, and violence as i stood there in the middle of the cotton fields to be reminded of the struggles that are still present and manifested now in mass gun violence against people of color in America hounding the news now.

"Weeds from Above"

“Weeds From Above”

2019

animation, video projection

Weeds, by definition, are invasive and are sources of food insecurity and economic instability for farmers. In the Philippines, farm lands are kept in check by the extensive labor pool. Give the Philippines’ massive population that revolve around agriculture, weeds are systematically and efficiently extracted. Thus, the true weed problem many farmers face for generations are plunderous politicians. The politics of the Philippines is feudal under the veneer of democracy. These politicians, many of whom are member of the powerful, influential elite landowning families of the country feed into the cycles of impunity, wreaking havoc and destruction. There have been massacres of farmers and their families that organize and protest against abuse, labor exploitation, and injustice. Current government policies have seen farmers selling their harvest for a pittance while many politicians fatten up their coffers by this exploitative system. Many farmers are forced to sell their lands to real estate developers — among the largest in the Philippines is owned by a senator. The weeds from above, are rapacious, massive tumor-like growth and metastasis of political control feed the weeds of cultural mendicancy that poison the lands.

In the Weeds Friday, August 2nd, 6:00-9:00 PM Studio 1 at CASP (1010 Mac Davis Lane, #1) Studio 1 at CASP presents, "In the Weeds," an exhibition that brings together José Santos P. Ardivilla, Gugulethu T. Moyo, J. Eric Simpson, and Susan Tomlinson to explore the unwanted plants of an ecosystem - weeds.

three years of Duterte and still….

you know, i am SO wrong in making fun of the DDS’ intellect (although it is fun but that is low and cheap kinda like many of them)....i have stopped questioning and doubting the intellectual capacity of the DDS. many of them are actually smart...but not wise. now, if we shift the argument from intellect to integrity and the preponderance for treachery against our nation, our own people....i mean isn’t it bad that you have the high mental capacity and yet you are STILL treasonous? so, yeah, when i see you, i will still smile at you, i will still wish the best for you, really i would. but you are still a traitor. i smile at you and will not exert any effort against you because i am not like that....i am not like your beloved president whom you idolize and never demand accountability from...thuggish and vengeful....mainly i will not actively seek your diminishing because i am too busy doing what i like and because i believe in karmic retributions. but, never forget.... #TaksilKa

Uber and Heartbreak

the uber driver and I had an interesting conversation. She was telling me how her 25-year old son grew up with Toy Story and that they enjoyed the latest one. Have I seen it?

"No. Not yet."

"You should! Prepare for the tears, though. Although I do not know if you cry because you are a man."

“Oh I cry, like, a lot these days.”

She laughs.

Then she says that she just recently moved to Lubbock, like me. And that she is working at the education sector, like me. and that she wishes educators get higher salaries....girl, same sentiment. She needs the extra money, that's why she is driving the uber, because she has only 2500 USD left in the bank and that her husband has stopped depositing money for her and for their autistic son.

Then she revealed that her husband of 27 years left her for a younger woman. Mind you, when she was telling the story of her heartbreak with a sincere unshakeable mirth in her singsong voice, but there are quakings here and there. Her eyes started glistening.

"To think, he did this a few days after our anniversary which is February 14th, of all days! We even flew to Egypt for our anniversary....then he texts a few weeks later....and then I see him and his new girl back in Egypt going to the places we went!"

*gasp*

"He was my high school sweetheart, you know? He told me that because I grew fat, he no longer feels any desire for me!"

THAT ASSHOLE!!!

"I knew something was up between him and his coworker. Look, she's very pretty. Here I will show you."

At this point, we have reached my destination. She whips out her phone and scrolls.

"That's me and husband in Alexandria, Egypt."

"you look so happy there."

"I know. Then this is my husband and this woman in the same place a few weeks later!"

Then she opens the new girl's instagram page....how the hell is this healthy, I think to myself....but then I recall she was just recently dumped, and that sting can make people go crazy, believe me, I KNOW. and uber driver shows me the photos. The young lady is like a broke copy of Kim Kardashian, with the "thicc" poses and the pouts.

I told her this: "I am not an expert in these matters. But it seems to me that your husband had a midlife crisis of growing old with the same woman and he decided to act stupidly. This stupidity has made him cast aside you and his son. You know that the days ahead will be really tough. I know your friends have already told you that you deserve better. But what you're doing right now?...this ubering?....is part of that slow, painful recovery....and I really wish you will overcome this."

She was not asking for money. She was just looking for somebody to listen. and, truly, among the saddest sounds I have heard in my life is that of heartbreak and betrayal.

I told her what I always tell my friends about misery having weight. Now, it feels like it is crushing you (I remember having a hard time breathing when my dad died) but the weight changes....it becomes manageable...it becomes small, but it will never leave us. However, it WILL get better. It HAS to be. Or....as I have seen many of my friends who have dealt with shattering losses, you have to make it better.

The Joys of wiggle room

the thing with unplanned traveling, it is something that is diametrically opposed to who i am. i usually plan out the daily itinerary. but i had to let that go because i get stressed because of the time constraints. my cousin mentioned of a friend that flew in to Jersey with a list of the places where to go. i have learned to make that list very short and just go with it.

starting this year, i just said eff it. i know where i am going but i do not know what to do. i will be very flexible and just think on my toes. i ended up dancing my ass off in a rooftop bar in Nashville, Tennessee. in New York, I saw the massive exhibition of Andy Warhol. in New Jersey, i saw my old classmates, hung out with cousins, and made some new friends, i found myself with relatives in Pennsylvania clambering up the Rocky steps....all of these unplanned. all of these just emerged as brilliant opportunities. 

Last week, Dallas was not in my mind. Ran into a Pinay friend in the gym (which i just restarted on a whim) and she asked me if i wanted to go to Dallas with her. and i said hell yeah. and i was more focused on my summer classes.

the moment my Spanish exam ended, i rushed home and just went off to Dallas....and saw the vast beautiful Texan landscapes. Maam Nida was asking if i had a plan for Dallas. i just said i want to see art and eat ramen. and i ended up with so much more.  so much more that i am still smiling.

the point of this is i have learned to manage expectations and befriend flexibility (which is something difficult for me)...but ultimately i no longer make demands from life and from the universe that such and such should happen. i just show up, so to speak, and listen to where the winds might take me.

And Just Like That, My First Year in PhD Flew Past

There are tornado warnings.  The sun outside is bright one time then gets covered by thick rolling clouds that form a wall somewhere else where tornadoes descend.  I have my emergency bag stashed here with clothes, my passport, but I feel fine.

I just saw my grades for the Spring 2019 semester and they are all A’s.  That, to me, is triumph considering I really struggled on Fall 2019 semester which I had a grade of B.  It just goes to show that I survived my first year here as a PhD student.  And as the winds start howling a little bit more loudly, I am still fine.  A year ago, I couldn’t even turn on the oven.  Later, I will be cooking some meatballs.  A year ago, I was getting mentally exhausted from the MFA.  Now, the classes make me feel alive.  A year ago I could not even process that I will be leaving for Texas because I had to finish my MFA before I had to start. 

Now, I am still processing that home for the next few years is Lubbock. 

I do not hate it here.  Really, I don’t.  I do not envy other scholars who have gone to bigger cities hence more accessible to the cosmopolitan America we all know.  Lubbock IS America that I needed to be familiar with.  This is the perfect locus on what America is right now: a prevailing conservative town with a population that is turning browner every year and where there are people who are in the culture and arts that aim to produce something not for marketability but to cater to community.  They really take their arts program in Texas quite seriously…which is mind-blowing.  You’d think that LA and NY are the locus for the arts.  They are the center of the art world, yes.  But arguably, not all the time.  It was not in NY where pop art was legitimized by a museum.  It was at the Modern and Contemporary Museum of Houston….in Texas.  Plus, Marfa, Texas is where the exciting contemporary American artists flock to.  So, I ain’t knocking down Texas. 

One year ago, I couldn’t care less about agriculture despite knowing most of the Philippines is agricultural.  Now, I am beginning to grasp more on the persistence of agricultural issues not just for the economy, but for global assertions, as well as marginalized indicators.  Now that Cynthia Villar is number one in the recent polls, she is very much a problematic figure on what agriculture is undergoing now in the 21st century.  Her rapacious real estate have been converting prime agricultural lands into waste buckets of subdivisions thus further destabilizing Manila’s food security.  It is a different take here in Lubbock, but many farmers voted for Trump, but now with the tariff wars with China, many farmers are now clamoring for a stronger grasp on international relations which Trump does not have.  I say all of this because for years….YEARS…..my study has been focused on the favorite Philippine symbol for nation by political cartoonists: Juan dela Cruz, initially a figure of agriculture.   The migration of farmers from the Philippines to America helped reshaped American labor as well as the very economic landscape of the wild, wild West.  In a way, Filipinos are among the migrant laborers who “tamed” the west.  And these manongs, the Filipino farmers asserted themselves with cultural activities like fashion and dance.  Some of them going home and bringing back some cultural hybridization which stoked the fires of cosmopolitanism in Manila and in their home towns. 

Maybe these few days is perfect time for me to set aside critical theory readings and read my copy of Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart (One of the books I had shipped from Manila).  I have always know of this book but never really read it back home.  Maybe now that I am displaced myself, perhaps I could see myself in some of the characters in Bulosan’s pages.  I am not saying I am a farm worker like them.  I am not as poor as they are although arguably I am so close to that, if you only knew how much I am making here (let’s say I make much more back home).

One year ago, I was thinking of farmer as a concept.  Now, I am still connecting the dots that make farmers the very reason we have notions of cosmopolitanism and of nation and of diasporic labor migration.

I wonder where will I be next year.

 Oh, hey, the weather outside calmed down and the sun is out.