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We’ll be in Intramuros tomorrow to participate in the opening activities of the NCCA for the Philippine Arts Festival. Am posting our statement on the project and its Tagalog translation.

best regards,

ian

ARTISTS’ STATEMENT on

“URBAN WONDERLAND: THE TURO-TURO PROJECT”

The Neo-Angono Artists Collective presents new spheres of visual engagement through “Urban Wonderland: The Turo-Turo Project” – a site-specific zone intervention work wherein the group collaborates with the local community and residents of Intramuros. Graduating from the original concept of a “mural,” the work aims to transform several parts of the façade/structure of a chain of stores and eateries situated across the National Commission for Culture and the Arts building on Gen. Luna St. Appropriating the theme of “Public Art” as a modern allegory, the installation work reflects the geographic mosaic of location and identities. The work would touch on some episodes of Philippine history side by side with present social realities. The jarring juxtaposition of disparate elements in the work represents issues of displacement and the blurring of boundaries while hinting at questions regarding the nature of power and the use of art as a mechanism for social change.

As a descriptive reference to the “public,” the collective’s work hopes to serve as a contemporary rhetoric, integrating art into the public realm. This would be experienced on the day of production (February 1, 2008), when the group places life-sized and free-standing images of personages and characters scattered along the front parking lot of the work’s site. As a way of examining contact zones presented as dioramas of site-responsiveness, the public is invited to interact with the free-standing images by inserting their heads through some of the figures, to be photographed and integrated into the “scene” as a vital part of the project.

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Tags: Art, Filipinos, mural
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Dug this up in my files. In 2000, I was still teaching in Adamson University. I taught mostly “Logic” and “Philosophy of Man.” From time to time, I’d be given subjects like “Art Appreciation” and “Rizal.” One day, I was approached by a co-teacher from the English Department. She was coaching a student who was about to enter a speech contest of sorts (a declamation contest?). Either the topic was about Rizal or the new millenium. (Remember, this was the year 2000.) She asked me to write a piece for this student. I sort of liked the topic and so came up with this piece. The repetition of one sentence in the last paragraphs was done precisely because this was written as a kind of “speech.” Hahaha. I even picked up Fidel Ramos’s “pole-vaulting into the new millenium” crap.

best regards,
ian

————

THE PHILIPPINES WITHIN A THOUSAND YEARS
by Michael Ian Lomongo, January 31, 2000

More than a hundred years ago, Dr. Jose Rizal wrote an essay in which he asked what would become of the Philippines within a century. In this particular essay, he argued for the urgent necessity of basic reforms such as the institution of a free press in the Philippines and its representation in the Spanish Cortes, that is, if Spain wanted to preserve the Philippines as a loyal colony. Still, with the penetrating insight of a social analyst, Rizal more than just hinted at the independence that the Filipinos would eventually seek. It was just a matter of time — and a question of whether the separation between Spain and the Philippines would be marked with gratitude and love, or hatred and resentment.

That question, of course, would be answered less than a decade after the essay “Filipinas dentro de cien años” was published in “La Solidaridad.” Now, with our freedom having been finally won and our friendly relations with Spain having been restored, we ask – as Rizal once did, if not with the same insight, at least with the same urgency: what have we, as a nation, gained and learned in the past century, and what can we look forward to in the coming years, in the advent of the new millenium?

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Tags: Education, Filipinos, Jose Rizal
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Paghihintay sa Chuvatienes…
ni Michael Ian Lomongo, August 18, 2006

Hindi maikakailang malaki na rin ang naging impluensya ng salitang bading o gay lingo sa pang-araw-araw na pananalita ng madla. Sa pinoy gay lingo, kapansin-pansin ang mala-chopsuey na paghahalo ng iba’t-ibang wika (Tagalog, Japanese, Spanish, English, atbp.) at sari-saring alusyon sa pop culture (gaya ng mga pangalan ng mga artista). Kadalasan, dahil na rin sa dami ng variations at pagpapalamuti ng mga salita, halos ‘di mo na makilala at malaman kung saan hinango ang mga ito.

Halimbawa, san kaya nagmula ang katagang “chuvatienes”? Maaaring ang “chuva” ay variation ng “chever/cheber,” na maaari namang pinaikling “whatever/whichever” (o posible rin sigurong updated version ng salitang Tagalog na “keber,” na mula naman sa Spanish “que ver” ); ang “tienes” naman (kung saan hinango ang “chenelyn”) ay Spanish ng “you have.” Kaya, kung tutuusin, ang “chuvatienes” ay Spanglish ng “what-have-you.” Sa madaling salita, “anuman”… “whatever.”

Nitong nakaraang Hunyo, napanood ko ang produksyon ng Tanghalang Pilipino ng “Waiting for Godot” ni Samuel Beckett. Bilang pagdiriwang sa ika-isandaang taon ng kapanganakan ni Beckett, nakipagtulungan ang CCP, Alliance Francaise, Embahada ng Pransya at NCCA para imbitahan ang isang direktor mula Avignon, si Alain Timar, na idirihe ang isang adaptasyon ng nasabing dula (sa panibagong salin ni George de Jesus III).

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Tags: Art, Filipinos, Gender Issues, Philosophy, Samuel Beckett, spirituality, Theater, Translation
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Will keep posting old articles until they are all archived here. Will post something new every now and then.

best regards,

ian

Writing in Tongues

By Michael Ian Lomongo, April 29, 2001

(Thoughts on Actors’ Actors Inc.’s production of Paul Stephen Lim’s “Mother Tongue” — with Bart Guingona, Nieves Campa, Miren Alvarez, Ed Feist, Richard Cunanan, Bobbie Greenwood, Kate Fernandez; directed by Chris Millado)

The day I watched AAI’s production of Stephen Paul Lim’s “Mother Tongue,” I had just finished reading Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club.” I’ve long wanted to read the novel after seeing the movie years ago. Some of the people I’ve talked with, who have both read the novel and seen the movie, preferred the novel. As they say, much is lost in any translation (whether it be from one medium to another or from one language to another). For me though, much of the narrative’s visceral impact in the watching wasn’t there in the reading (probably because I was no longer encountering it for the first time).

Anyway, I mentioned “The Joy Luck Club,” because like it, “Mother Tongue” is about finding and defining one’s identity and home in the Land of Promise. The former is about immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters, and how they try to bridge the breach in understanding caused by two disparate cultures; the latter, about a Chinese mother who’s an immigrant to the Philippines and her writer-son who migrates to America, and how this son seeks her mother’s understanding in his freely causing (and embracing) the breach.

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Tags: Desire, Filipinos, Gender Issues, identities, Languages, Power, Writing
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