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.
