Coron, Mon Amour

Tagbanua youth guards the entrance to a freshwater lake on Coron Island.

ONLY HALF A CENTURY AGO Palawan remained at the very precipice of the Philippines, the destiny of lepers and hardened criminals. It later became the barrier of containment for the miserable fleeing tyranny in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. What has kept the province on the psychical outer edge of the archipelago, however, has helped make it today the preserve of an irretrievably lost world, a Philippine Shangri-la.

National carrier Philippine Airlines now has a regular flight to Busuanga, the principal northern island of Palawan. Previously, only Seair flew there. Increased demand for quick passage to this formerly remote destination—notably from foreign travelers—has put Busuanga on the commercial flight map.

Busuanga is part of the closely scattered Calamian group of islands. So far its chief attraction to the world outside has been for divers: the 12 Japanese ships sunk by the American Navy in its waters towards the end of World War II. In their ocean-bottom graveyards, the ships are cathartic, hair-raising places to swim through. But the islands—notably Coron, the ancestral domain of the indigenous Tagbanua—have many other attractions as well—paradisiacal and dramatic, once-in-a-lifetime, Bucket List destinations.

The heart is where it hurts, everywhere

Mabanengbeng is a small, agricultural barrio in the province of La Union. On rare occasions, they hold a dapil, a celebratory juicing of the sugar cane harvest. At a dapil I was invited to, the farmers had festooned the horns of the carabao pulling the mill for the cane with flowers and ribbons. Some of the women of the village sang songs. In the attached video, note how distinct the vocal effect striven for.



The chorus the women sing begins, "Anay, anay, pusok," which means, "Aray, aray, puso ko." I can't think of any sufficient way to translate that into English. A transliteration would be, "Ouch, ouch, my heart," which simply doesn't capture the plaintive elegance of the original. I think even the Tagalog translation sounds a little funny.

Some Filipino farmers have found a new use for outmoded video and audiotape--as substitutes for scarecrows. Unfurled, they shimmer when the wind and sun hit them.

On another farm in La Union, children employed the material in an installation. Twigs and audiotape, dimensions vary.

Like an Ejaculation

From top: Clay vagina by Julie Lluch; clay monster by Bathma Kaew-Ngok; National Artist Bencab with Wig Tysmans; collectors Hetty and Paulino Que with Duemilla gallery owner Sylvana Diaz.

It was over in what seemed like a flash. Yesterday's opening of The Ring of Fire, an exhibition of contemporary works of Southeast Asian ceramic artists, commenced with the smashing of a clay palayok filled with sampaguita. Then there was a dramatic crescendo of Edru Abraham's magnificent Kontra-Gapi band or Kontemporaryong Gamelang Pilipino, which fuses traditional kulintang music with electric guitars (bass played by crush-ng-bayan Ira Cruz), modern drum and synthesizer. Then the guests thronged the exhibit, enthralled by the range and artistry of the works in clay. Then it was all over. It was frenetic and celebratory.

Now that's a show.

Guests included National Artists Bencab and Arturo Luz, with respective partners Annie Sarthou and Tessie Luz, poetess Virginia Moreno, master photographer Neal Oshima, writer and style icon Karla Delgado Yulo, photographer Wig Tysmans, Ateneo Art Gallery director Richie Lerma, Lopez Museum director Cedie Lopez Vargas, collector Paulino Que with wife Hetty, Duemilla Gallery owner Sylvana Diaz, plus all the ceramic artists who participated in the exhibit, notably Jon and Tessie Pettyjohn, Hadrian and Camille Mendoza, Julie Lluch and Pablo Capati, among the Philippines based.

The show runs up to October 4 only, so plan on going soon.

A Fine Evening in Hell

From top: Across the River Styx; Constantino 'Cos' Zicarelli

I REALLY wasn't invited to an event last night called Hell, which I thought was an art exhibit opening. (It was and it wasn't.) The night prior, at the opening of Geraldine Javier's sold-out exhibit, The Swank Style editor Jerome Gomez introduced me to artist Constantino Zicarelli. (By the way, we all know who bought the Javier worth P1.2 million. Tangina, ang laki pala ng sweldo.)Mr. Gomez told me that Mr. Zicarelli was opening his own show the following night.

At around 7pm yesterday, I was going crazy in the office. I texted Mr. Gomez if he was going to Mr. Zicarelli's opening, and, even though I am normally very punctilious about invitations, if I could go with him. Mr. Gomez replied in the affirmative. Although I had made a deliberate attempt to delay, I arrived at the event well before Mr. Gomez.

The venue turned out to be Mr. Zicarelli's own residence in Quezon City, a townhouse in a quiet neighborhood. The gate of the home was left open onto the street for the occasion. On the facade, in bold all-caps a backlit sign read: HELL, not the most neighhborly of welcomes, to be sure, although cheerily colored.

"Naku," Mr. Zicarelli greeted me. "Hindi ko alam na dadating ka. Nakakahiya!" The truth of the matter is it was I that should have been hiya for making the intrusion. Mr. Zicarelli explained that it wasn't really an opening but a marking of his birthdate a few days before, and that"HELL" was supposed to have been included in an exhibit at Mo Space but somehow failed to.

It might as well have been an opening because in attendance were many artists, collectors, writers, among them Jayson Oliveira, Poklong Anading and MM Yu, and the potter Pablo Capati.

On the front door was tacked a statement about the show by the artist's friend, Angelo Suarez:

Daddy, I have cum home

The religious who subscribe to the hegemony of heterosexuality maintain that gayness--especially upon the consummation of the "homosexual act"--can lead one to hell. Homophobics who find their way here, to Constantino Zicarelli's exhibition wherein the declaration that this is hell conceptually transforms his home into hell, should thus beware: It is likely they are standing next to a faggot.

I was so glad I came.

Mr. Zacarelli's Isabela-based Italian father, Mr. Zacarelli pere, happened to be visiting. I do not know if Mr. Zacarelli fils had the title formulated for the occasion, but I do know that he is not, as they sometimes say in the vernacular, "a gay." Mr. Zacarelli fils was once romantically paired with a beautiful artist, female. Together they made one of the most handsome couples in artlandia. That is not the evidence of course, but basta, as they say in Italian and Filipino, hindi siya bading.

Charming, solicitous, self-effacing and--above all--interesting, Mr. Zacarelli fils inhabits a Filipino heterosexual masculinity that can only be found in the world of art. The argument of course is based on the theory that there are a multiplicity of masculinities, ranged according to a hegemony.

Mr. Capati, whom I had the good fortune to fall into conversation with that evening, is another case in point. On one occasion, the potter who grew up in Japan served a tempura lunch for Mr. Gomez and me, in an orchard, on vessels he had made himself, with ground plum and Japanese pepper. Hitsura ni Martha Stewart.

I was glad I came, because apart from Mr. Gomez, what other faggot would everyone else be standing next to?

An Event to Remember

Manila’s social set attended the book launch of New York-based events designer Jerry Sibal at the Makati Shangri-La ballroom Tuesday evening. The coffee table book is titled An Event to Remember and documents Mr. Sibal’s spectacular settings for lavish parties.

Imelda Marcos and Ching Cruz both arrived in Lincoln Town cars, Madame’s was black, Mrs. Cruz’s white.

At the caida, guests were greeted by human flowers, two people sheathed in black jersey and garlanded with flowers fashioned out of quilted fabric. I don’t remember if they were men or women. The black jersey stretched to cover platforms they were standing on so they towered over everyone.

In the hall just outside the ballroom, there was a woman seated on an apple-shaped chair covered in red roses on a long white platform. She wore a white satin gown and held a red apple. Behind her, running the length of the platform, was a depiction of a city skyline. Presumably the tableau was a reference to the Big Apple, where Mr. Sibal has found success.

Just within the doors of the ballroom was a scrim veiling the rest of the venue. To one side of the scrim was a bough of orchids, at the foot of which posed a fairy, in more than one sense of the word, a transsexual with butterfly wings.

The entrance was flanked by living furniture, two drag queens plunged into the center of round tables which were fashioned into skirts of their elaborate costumes.

Among those who came were Mia Borromeo, Tats Rejante-Manahan, Conrad Onglao (characteristically casual), Mike Toledo (unusually in a barong), Conchitina Bernardo, Pitoy Moreno, Gerry Contreras, Sonia Mathay, Teyet Pascual, Crickette Tantoco, Margie Moran-Floirendo, Louie Ysmael, Gloria Diaz, Tim Yap, Rajo Laurel, Inno Sotto, Ambeth Ocampo, Maricris Zobel, Chris and Katrina Goulbourn-Feist, Tessa Prieto, Louie Locsin, and Monique Villonco.

The ballroom was lit blue for the event, and there were curtained-off squares, which would presumably be unveiled as the evening progressed, but I had to leave so I didn’t discover what was to unfold in them. But it was an event to remember, indeed.

A Dissonance

From top: '308', '425', '449' all by Frankie Callaghan. Courtesy Silverlens. Click photo to enlarge.

On the way out of the opening of Frankie Callaghan’s exquisite exhibit at Silverlens Gallery last night, I bumped into the photographer himself returning from the driveway. Having learnt from a conversation with him upstairs in the gallery that he came to the Philippines at the age of 10 when the family settled in Baguio, I asked him if he spoke Ilocano. Mr. Callaghan speaks with a mild British accent when he speaks in English; his late father was British, his mother is Filipino. Mr. Callaghan moved back to the Philippines a couple of years ago. From the way he speaks in English it’s impossible to say if he has any Tagalog. And he certainly looks very foreign. I digress. In response to my question, Mr. Callaghan leaned his face to me (he is a good foot taller) and said, “Wen,” with that super hard, guttural short e that is a characteristic of Baguio Ilocano. He sounded like a fieldworker from Asin, or a vegetable vendor on Session Road. Most disconcerting.

“It’s so hard to look at the art at an opening,” I was saying to the editor of the magazine Flow, Miguel Rosales, upstairs. I always meet Mr. Rosales at the cocktails-for-culture. “You’re trying to look at the art, but you can’t help thinking, ‘Oh my God, she’s gotten so fat,’ or ‘What a chic thing she’s got on,’ or ‘They’re together?’” The opening of an exhibit, mandatory to attend in support of the artist and the making of art in general, is, for all its attempts at being about art, a social event.

At Dwellings, however, Mr. Callaghan’s exhibit of photographs, the beauty is plain and voluptuous. The sensibility is operatic, like an aria, but without pathos, so there is something cold about it too, and unflinching.

For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816-0044, 0905-2650873, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am–7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com.

An Illumination

Above: Manuel Ocampo, Poklong Anading. Please click photo to enlarge.

Background: 'Forward to the Sweet Tranquility of the Status Quo'. Foreground: Detail of 'Agent of Good + Bad Criticism: In Need of Plumbing', 2009, mixed media, dimensions variable

Miguel Rosales (right) and hottie friend

Sandra Palomar

On reading The Philippine Spectator's entry on his show, the eminent Manuel Ocampo sent an illumination of its impetus and context. Monuments to the Institutional Critique of Myself, says its author, was inspired by squatter aesthetics. The title is ironic; it is "the unmonumental," that moves the artist, "the poetry in the use of poor materials."

He was aiming for "the color of Manila from childhood memories: sepia, charcoal, dirty white." But Mr. Ocampo's artistic reference are more worldly. "Bukowski via Broodthaers," he says.
Charles Bukowski was sometimes called "the poet laureate of skid row" for poems and short stories that dealt with poverty and his alcoholism. Of Marcel Broodthaers, I know only one work, the one made of an actual casserole, an iron one, and actual mussels stacked in it in a way that suggests they are rising from the heat. Broodthaers famously struggled in poverty as an artist for 20 years before he decided to make something "insincere".

According to Wikipedia: "He is associated with the late 20th century global spread of both installation art, as well as 'institutional critique' in which interrelationships between artworks, the artist, and the museum are a focus." Mr. Ocampo's has growingly been concerned with such a critique as reflected in the title of his exhibit. He has been caught in a paradox of attempting to break the commodification of art yet remaining legible as art or as meaning. Despite the almost squalid quality of the materials used in this show, one work is priced at P900,000, a reflection of Mr. Ocampo's stature in the international market.

And despite the apparent haphazard assembly of the installations, there is a formal coherence to the pieces. It is artful haphazardness or dissembled artfulness. And it's beautiful.

Is it art? It is definitively art. It is garbage and it's art.

The Fashion

Cecile Zamora van Straten (left, with friend Cedric; click any photo to enlarge) is the idol of Manila's fashion avant garde. Thursday, September 3, she launched a new line (the three shirts on the gentlemen in first photograph below) for the brand Bleached Catastrophe at Greenbelt 5. Her fans came. Among her guests were jeans designer Ino Caluza and Carlos Concepcion (bottom left), designers Rajo Laurel, Louis Claparols and Ivarluski Aseron, pioneering stylist Michael Salientes, publicist Carmina Sanchez, style icon Leica Carpo, newspaper columnists Ana Kalaw and Bea Ledesma.

Japanese Mormons

In Laie, Oahu, about an hour north of Honolulu is the Polynesian Cultural Center. It is a very popular tourist attraction, showcasing island "village" life and, in a nightly extravaganza the songs and dances of some of the key islands comprising Polynesia, including Hawaii, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa. Of course it's bogus, but among boguses this ain't so bad. The songs are beautiful, and they are not translated and there are no subtitles. And the dances are mesmerizing. Certainly far better than the bogus tourist luaus. O bon dieu. The most uncivilized pack of cliches. A potlatch des banalités. Ugh. Disgusting.

Visitors to the PCC also seem to be much more mixed. On the one hand it's a version of Disneyland's It's a Small World, but also not. The curious thing about the PCC is that it is run by Mormons. That came as a shock to me. And it also made me appreciate the program more because I expected some kind of teleology in which the Church of the Latter Day Saints comes to bring light to the peoples of Polynesia. Thankfully, there was none. Not a single reference to Christianity or even Westerners at all. Appreciable, because the LDS Church is famous for its unflagging missionary work, and here in the Philippines that iconic pair of white boys in short sleeves and rep ties marching some dusty provincial trail or chaotic urban street has become a familiar apparition.

The PCC was established in 1963 as a means of allowing students of the nearby Brigham Young University to support themselves through school. Young (1801-1877) was one of the pioneers of the LDS Church; he founded Salt Lake City, and helped lead the settlement of the Western United States. The students staff the PCC. They act as guides, bus tables at the grand buffet that precedes the show, man the ticket booths, and so on. Presumably, they are not among the performers, choreographers, producers.

The curious thing is that many of the students are Japanese. According to one survey, Japanese Mormons have doubled in number since 1980. What leads the Japanese to Mormonism is a bafflement. Christianity itself has been so alien. In their Samoan skirts, with their slim figures, with their refinement and politesse the Japanese men of the PCC are strikingly attractive (photo above, click to enlarge).

The show "Breath of Life" shows in dance and song the unique cultures of each Polynesian place, but also narrates the migration which led to a commonality. It remains a bafflement still how Polynesian peoples created this commonality over an area that stretches millions of miles of open sea.

Polynesians are said to have originated thousands of years ago from Southeast Asia. It takes about a dozen hours to get from Manila to Honolulu on an airplane. Polynesians navigated the almost incomprehensible vastness of the sea by aid of starlight, the migration of birds, the pattern of waves, the winds' rhythms around atolls.

The Mormons honor Brigham Young, but he is controversial to the larger world. He was a practitioner of Mormon polygamy; he had 55 wives and around the same number of children. He is also linked to a massacre in which 120 men, women and children were killed. Recently, Mormons caught the public glare when polygamous households were brought to light in the media, and allegations were made of child abuse. Some of the houses the media showed were mansions housing several wives and all their children.