Online forum crosses intersection between art and activism
Artist groups pushing for social justice converged to examine how art and activism cross paths to rally and protest against oppressive regimes. in the recent online forum, titled “intersections of Art, Activism and social Justice in the Philippines,” several art movements discussed their roles in critical discourse and protest movements from the Marcos dictatorship to the Duterte administration.
in his keynote address, University of the Philippines-diliman professor and Vargas Museum curator Patrick Flores tackled activism in the country’s visual arts field. Activist intervention and activist subjectivity are encompassing, he said, and to situate activism within the art world is “to be governed by the internal dynamism of this context.”
“that said, it is also to move around the everexpanding perimeters of the art world, as it responds to the persistent urgencies of the world and the responsiveness of contemporary art critically aware of its time and place,” he added.
Flores noted as well that the relations of power in the production of the art world render the methods of institutional critique productive, to the extent that they expose asymmetries within the system.
“such critique inevitably widens when the colonial condition is rendered constitutive of the art world and the criteria of art,” he said. “institutional and postcolonial critique must therefore inform our mediation of the contentiousness of all claims to art. As the structure is constantly reconsidered, so is the agency being made sharper and more sensitive, which can only mean that the energy to resist a structure that resists the said energy stirs up a generative tension and necessary volatility. in other words, the relay of forces and resistances underlies all efforts to affirm and reconstruct.”
Flores serves as the director of Philippine Contemporary Art Network, or PCAN, a recently initiated public institution for contemporary art. the group is a partner of the event’s main presenter, the transnational Coalition for the Arts. According to its manifesto, transnational is a “necessary and immediate response” to the threats made against the lives and democratic freedoms of fellow artists, cultural workers, and people around the world.
“intersections” was the second iteration of “A 100 Days Conference series” by transnational and PCAN. the program featured two segments. One was moderated by tessa Maria Guazon of PCAN, featuring members of art alliances Yadanar Win, Alon segarra and Cian Dayrit. the other was moderated by Renan Laru-an also of PCAN, together with Concerned Artists of the Philippines secretary-general Lisa ito and London-based artist Pio Abad.
in the first section, mixed media Burmese artist Yadanar provided a snapshot of the current situation in Myanmar as the country continues to deal with the effects of the pandemic and the February coup d’état. the artist, also a member of transnational, said that some 132 artists in Myanmar have passed away in the past month mainly due to Covid-19, pointing to lack of access to proper health care and restrictions to mobility.
Meanwhile, segarra and Dayrit discussed their groups’ fight for social justice in the country.
segarra is a member of Respond and Break the silence Against the Killings, or RESBAK. she said the range of interventions produced by the group—which includes short films, exhibitions, intergenerational forums and the like—all intend to change or deepen the conversation about drugs as a public health issue, supporting families and survivors of the drug wars, and demanding investigation and accountability for the killings.
segarra also shared a unity statement by RESBAK in 2019 that she said still feels relevant today with the continued attacks on the poor, farmers, human-rights lawyers and activists. the statement ends with the line: “stop the killings, stop the attacks, because no matter how you try to kill and threaten us, the people will—and can—fight back.”
Meanwhile, Dayrit of the Artist Alliance for Genuine Land Reform and rural Development, or SAKA, underscored the persistent and widening socioeconomic gap in the country.
“the Philippines is an archipelago with a total land area of 30 million hectares. With its fertile soil, 12 million hectares are designated for agriculture, which should be more than enough to feed the population. Despite this, we are the 28th worst country based on GDP,” he said. “the total net worth of the 25 richest Filipinos is equal to the combined income of 74 million poorest Filipinos.”
Asked by Guazon, the moderator, on which programs of protests can perhaps spark what Flores has mentioned as “generative tension,” or ignite the “necessary volatility” across an intersection of allied groups, Dayrit pointed to none in particular.
“it is the consistency in how we do it,” Dayrit said. “in the context of the upcoming elections next year, it is not so much the case on who will reign, but more of as long as we continue addressing the issues and put forward the advocacies and the agendas of the basic masses.”
segarra concurred, saying it is more about “continuing the conversations and also the involvement of the communities that we are with.”
“What we are doing now, speaking,” Yadanar added, “is solidarity.”
Meanwhile, in the second section of the program, Laru-an initiated a conversation on the status of the use of context today. Very much consistent in speech and articulation, he said, context serves all paradigms of activism and art activism. But there is a danger to it as a tool that can be routinized and used to extinguish certain vitalities, phenomena, experiences.
“in reflecting on activism as it occurs in social media, in how political urgencies kind of rise and fall in such quick succession, there has been an ease with which things are decontextualized, and therefore diminished,” Abad said, adding that demand for context has given rise to what others call an obsession to establish it.
“i agree that this commitment to context is really part of the whole process of not just production but action,” ito quipped. “i think in the practice, everyone from individuals to artist collectives, engagement with context takes on many very concrete forms.”
“As artists,” Abad added, “it is also our job to insist on historicizing things. so images of the histories of protests, activism in the Philippines, alongside the urgency of the now, it is the insistence of learning from the past. i think those two working in synergy will allow us to, you know, at the very least imagine a possibility, and then maybe, later on, construct it.”