t's been exciting and fun-filled, but we've been literally run off our feet (today's photo download yielded a high proportion of pics of family members sitting down wherever they got the chance), so I've gotten no time to post so far. I will do so soon.
The photo above is representative of the view of half of my days, speeding by spectacular scenery in an SUV.
Why does no one visit Panama? It's amazing.
ook familiar?
No, it's not a jeepney, and I didn't take the picture myself. This, above, is a pitcher of a painted Panama bus. I was wondering, before I arrived last night, if I really should post about my Panama trip on atlas(t): Galleon Trade, but one gander at the buses in Panama City laid my concerns to rest. This trip belongs on this blog.
Aside from the jeepney-esque buses, the close (but no ceegar) latitude of Panama City to Manila (Panama is souther, but less stifling hot), the history as a Spanish colony and then, in the 20th century, as an American colony, and its importance on a major trade route (in Panama, that last clause is an understatement), I say, aside from all that, I'm making this trip at exactly the same time I made the Manila trip last year. So there.
The trip is actually the perfect expression of travel, trade, and hybridity: it's a family reunion. My (Chinese) mother's oldest brother lives here, as do his two oldest daughters and their assorted kin. His daughters, my first cousins, are fourth generation Panamanian Chinese (my grandfather was, if you count back, second generation). But my mom was actually born and raised in Hong Kong. As I was just telling someone the other night, scratch any overseas Chinese family (or Filipino family) and you'll find that they haven't migrated just once, or to just one place, or in just one direction, or definitively, ever.
I arrived in Panama City last night, as I said, after a long day of nothing much at all. Today we were supposed to go yum cha (Chinese dim sum brunch) with the relatives, but somewho that got squashed so we "just" had a Chinese seafood banquet lunch instead, for, like, four hours. Got a quick drive through the city, and then had another meal at my cousin's house, complete with a gourmet coffee tasting (of coffee from Panama) and then ... what else? ... karaoke.
Tomorrow we're off to a resort in the rain forest. Onna beach. Envy me.
Don't worry, there will be art in all of this, by hook or by crook. And I will be taking pitchers of the buses. And I have some stuff coming up about the canal. Oh yes, the canal. Boo ya.
ust poking my head in for a second to give notice: the Galleon Trade fleet has finally arrived in San Francisco Bay!
A Galleon Trade show, curated by Woff, will be included as an outlying, guest-curated adjunct to this year's Bay Area Now 5 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. An excerpt from the planned wall didactic:
Galleon Trade: Bay Area Now 5 Edition addresses the deeply transnational ties between the Bay Area and the Philippines by pairing artists from both places. It features work by local artists Jaime Cortez, Megan Wilson, Johanna Poethig, Gina Osterloh and Christine Wong Yap, all of whom were members of the contingent that went to Manila in 2007, and met many local artists. In the spirit of the transpacific "trade" of Galleon Trade, these 5 artists were paired up with Manila artists Maria Taniguchi, Poklong Anading, Norberto "Peewee" Roldan, MM Yu, and Yason Banal. Their works are in direct conversation with each other, each artist's unique practice enriching and resonating with another's.
And this is not including the Galleon Trade shows planned for the Luggage Store! How exciting that this is all starting to happen!
I will definitely do some posting when this goes off; the BAN 5 show will be running from Sept 4 to Oct 19, in YBCA’s terrace galleries.
And here's a little item in the Guardian about it.
Yay!
i all!
I haven't posted here in donkey's years, although I have a couple of posts long overdue. I had an exchange between me an Christine Wong Yap ready to post and then lost it when the wireless at the cafe I was at shut off. It was about an hour's worth of work to clean up and I haven't had the heart to do it again.
But also, the Galleon Trade topic area has sputtered to a temporary halt for me. It's not that the artists have stopped making art, but that the cohesiveness of the group of artists has fray a little bit in my mind (only in my mind!). We're all back to our normal lives, it's been a year since we went to Manila, and the integrity of the topic has dissipated for me.
Also, I started blogging about art for KQED in January and that has absorbed a lot of my art blogging impulse.
I think when the Bay Area portion of Galleon Trade happens, there will be a flurry of posts. But it will be temporary. I think this blog will only survive, if it does, as an intermittent stream.
But also, I have a new, paid, blog called EnterBrainment, which is my usual meandering take, but this time on pop trash. It's a featured blog on a new, innovative blogging site called PNN or Personal News Network. The innovation sounds simple: the software is designed to allow bloggers to lay out their blogs like newspapers. But the result is a very different set of possibilities for blogging: more Huffington Post than Daily Kos.
Anyway, please check out the new blog and keep an eye out for my post with Christine. It's coming, I swear.
o real post today, just sticking my head in to explain why I haven't posted about Woff's show yet. (Running through February 23 at Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco, so get out there!)
I am currently--as in, right now, I just took a break from it to write this post--revising an article on Woff to appear in the next issue of Hyphen magazine. Not the Hybrid Issue that was just released this weekend, but the next one, due out in a few months, which is "spaces" themed, whatever that means.
As I was telling Herself, trying to write an article and a substantial blog post, both different, about the same subject, is like trying to give birth to fraternal twins at the same time, or trying to get a fat guy and a wide girl through the same doorway. Basically, we're gonna have to rethink that strategy.
Also, I just went all official 'n' shit as a blogger at the KQED arts and culture site. (For those of you scratching heads, KQED is the San Francisco NPR affiliate, one of those public radio hubs that originates a lot of programming, and a major contract employer of local artists and writers. So I'm very happy about that.
So this week I think I'll finally manage to get those puppies through the aperture, both. Well, we'll see. Stay tuned.
have a great many excuses, reasons, circumstances, 'n' such to present for being essentially non-blogging on this blog in the past few months. But the main reason is simple: depression.
Not that I've been completely nonfunctional. It's been a mild depression, brought on by shortening days, a mild health-related problem, and, perhaps most importantly, the seeming near-total suspension of my creative faculties in 2007. Crappy year.
At the end of this year someone, I think it was Jaime, told me that if you don't feed the beast it starts to feed on you, and it seems to be true. But there was also, with regard to my performance on this blog, some discomfort from a few of the Galleon Traders in response to my post about how the Galleon Trade Manila events were less about the artwork than about the artists themselves.
I see how this post could easily be read as being dismissive of the artists' work, although that was not my intention. Still less was it my intention to cause distress to the artists. Although it's always been clear to me in the abstract why "embedded reportage" leads to ethically compromising conflicts of interest, this is my first visceral experience with it. I'm simultaneously writing critically about artwork, and turning my critical eye on my friends. When the beast is busy eating your heart out, this kind of internal conflict can freeze you. And it did.
A few things have contributed to my release from freeze in the past week or so. The first was the turn of the year, which is powerfully symbolic, symbolically operative, and coincidentally happens a week or so after the winter solstice so that the symbolism and seasonal rhythm can work together to give you a full-on catharsis.The second was my doctor figuring out my mild health-related problem, but the less said about that the less boring.
The third was, strangely enough, that the Irish film Once got to the top of my netflix queue. No others of my friends felt the same way about this flick that I did, but when you're coming out of a depression and creative freeze, a movie about an artist who has come to the end of a long stretch of dark-night-of-the-souling and is jumped into the next level through the friendship of a fellow artist is just exactly what you need to see. The scenes where the two musicians play and sing together were ecstatically blissful for me, because their release felt like my release.
That's enough, clearly. But then the year turns and everyone gets energized in January again and Things Start Happening. In the past week I've stood before, and in one case, within, the artwork of distant geniuses, community sprites, and friends (sometimes all three at once), and it has been electrifying.
Last weekend the National Book Critics Circle was in San Francisco to acknowledge the existence of the provinces and announce the fina-list for their award. Thursday and Friday I went to three literary panels therefore. I might post about these over on my personal blog, but I won't here.
That same night (Friday) I went to Trader Woff's opening at Southern Exposure Gallery, a show I helped install, along with a number of other friends (in fact, helping get that show up was part of its process, and mine here).
Saturday I took one of my last chances to see Mike Arcega's installation at the De Young Museum, and also took in the Louise Nevelson show while I was there. Other De Younginess ensued.
Later that night I saw There Will Be Blood with Jaime, and trust me, there will be blog on how bad that flick was.
And Sunday afternoon, I took in the annual Day of the Kings concert of Coro Hispano with Robynn.
Yes, each of those is a future post, to which I will link here when they are complete. I called this post something about "artistic processes" because my blogging--my record-keeping of and spur to my critical practice--is string and parcel with my creative writing. My practice is integrated and revving up my critical function is the first step towards outright making shit up again. And vice very much versa, of course. So this is my declaration: as of January 15, 2008, Clairica is open for business.
Left to Right--Top: friend of Mike Arcega's, Mike Yap (Christine's husband), Camille Wofford, Christine Wong Yap, Dad Wofford, Mom Wofford, Jaime Cortez, Johanna Poethig; Center: artist friend whose name slides out of my head, Rick Silog, Mike Arcega (with flowers and balloon), Woff (with flowers and balloon), Emily Sevier; Front: Kenneth Loh, Stephanie Syjuco, Chris Brown, moi.
've finally begun writing posts again, but longer ones, so, while you're waiting for those, here's some stuffs.
The photo above is from Jenifer Wofford's and Mike Arcega's combined birthday party, held at Johanna Poethig's house in Oakland. Both were born on August 19, but a year apart. It's rather appropriate that our first gathering stateside since the trip was to honor these two, since Woff is clearly the head and heart of Galleon Trade, and Mike arguably its hands, being the artist who actually created a galleon long before the project was thought of.
Much basketball was played, and phallic balloons twisted.
As if the world was conspiring to think of our exploits, two articles followed our return. The first, from the Philippine Daily Inquirer, is simply reportage about Galleon Trade. Click on the image to get a high-res photo where you can read the text.
Relevant quote:
The term "brain drain" connected to their migrating parents is no longer applicable to these Fil-Ams. "Galleon Trade" proposes instead the use of the word "integration." It's amazing that the project took off despite the lack of government funding from both ends.
"Integration" being of a different form than the melting pot type. Too bad the article didn't go into it. Also too bad that they find grassroots community fundraising "amazing."
The other article, in the The Art Newspaper, is about the Manila underground arts scene, not about Galleon Trade. It lists a number of artists, curators, and art spaces we got to meet and hang out with and in while we were there. Have a quick gander, because some of those names will come up again.
orry this is taking so long, but I'm having technical issues.
I downloaded all my recordings to a pc, and now I need to:
rink wine, in an effort to make yourself "sleepy" (i.e. drunk.)
It won't make you sleepy.
So posting will have to start again later this week, once I've gotten over my own idiocy and settled back into my dayjob. Yes, I'm back in the Bay Area.
In the meantime, please enjoy the send off filmmaker Romeo Candido gave us in the last days of our Philippine sojourn. If you're attentive, you can catch a flash of me sitting in chair at the beginning:
And here's a more formal version of the same song:
The stupid stupid salesman at Radio Shack, who sold it to me, told me it downloaded to Mac. It doesn't download to Mac. So I'll have to wait until I get home to download the stupid thing to my PC at work, and then transfer somehow to my Mac, and then edit.
Anyhoo, at some point, I'll be able to share images of art and artists along with sound clips of them essplaining their art! Woo hoo! I'll also have sound clips from Carlos Celdran's Intramuros tour/performance/history lesson (which is hands down the best tour and the best history lesson I've ever gotten, and the best way to kick off a stay in Manila), and from the artist talk Carlos is hosting tonight, which will close down the Galleon Trade festivities week, and send the artists packing.
That's right: tonight is the last event, at Carlos' Living Room salon, so if you're in Manila, check it out.
The story so far:
Yes, I will be picking these apart in the coming days/weeks. But I'm not going to post on all of them. Like the Ship Launch auction and fundraiser party back in Oakland a few weeks ago, many of these events were fun to go to, but not to read about.
But if you want the event blow-by-blow, and pics to boot, check out Wofford's offeeshul Galleon Trade News blog.
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