PH’s ‘woven sounds’ and elegant weaves at 2022 Venice Art Biennale
Curated by Yael Buencamino Borromeo and Arvin Flores, the exhibit features collaborative work
Chants and nontraditional “woven sounds” make up the multimedia installation “Andi taku e sana, Amung taku di sana/All of us present,” the Philippine pavilion at the 59th Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, which recently opened in Venice with the theme “The Milk of Dreams.”
Curated by Yael Buencamino Borromeo and Arvin Flores, the exhibition at the Arsenale hall features collaborative work: elegant weaves by Ifugao artisan Sammy N. Buhle, performance art by ethnomusicologists Felicidad A. Prudente and visuals by Gerry Tan. “Andi taku e sana, Amung taku di sana” are the opening lines of a sogna, a chant for special occasions handed down to generations in the Mountain Province.
There are 80 participating countries in the 2022 Venice Art Biennale, National Commission for Culture and the Arts chair Arsenio “Nick” Lizaso said in his welcome remarks.
The Philippine pavilion has two parts. First is Tan’s video installation “Speaking in Tongue” featuring Prudente’s performative painting using squid ink as a medium as she follows the composition of esteemed chanter Jose Pangsiw.
“Renderings,” meanwhile, is a series of handwoven textiles with accompanying videos set up on the exhibit floor. But Borromeo clarified that the exhibit is not about traditional weaves.
“They are woven sound transcriptions—sound made visible,” Borromeo said. “Prudente translated the rhythms of the looms into notations, a process that required discipline and extensive experience in music transcription to accurately capture the timing of the looms’ movements, and creativity to imagine a language in which to render these nonpitched sounds.”
Borromeo said the project started six years ago when Tan visited a weaving house in Miag-ao, Iloilo province, and got captivated by the loom sounds.
“The beats, swooshes and thumps of the loom sounded like minimal music to him,” Borromeo said. “He thought, ‘What if they were weaving the sounds that their pedal looms were making?’”
Dialogue
So from Prudente’s notes, Tan drew the colored patterns that Buhle used as the basis for his weaves. Tan said a lot of his work “has a self-referential aspect to them. It feeds back on itself; there’s a loop that’s being created. As a viewer, when you approach the work, you present it with different realities at the same time. There’s a dialogue between materials and processes.”
Borromeo added that beyond recording and preservation, “the intervention of Gerry, Fe and Sammy created a dialogue with tradition, expanding the woven vocabulary and birthing a new system of symbols.”
She went on: “By rendering sound in ink and paper, and fabric and dye, a process, a performance becomes transmissible, open to iteration and inviting participation. It is interventions like these that seek not to change the traditional, but elaborate upon them that keep our culture alive and vibrant.”
The chants are also played in the pavilion, and it’s one way of ensuring that the sogna remains relevant and meaningful to the Madukayan-speaking community, at the same time preserving the practices of the Cordillera.
Prior to setting up at the Arsenale, which is a former medieval fortress, the Philippine Arts in Venice Biennale team did a mock-up at San Ignacio Church in Intramuros, Manila, which had similar stone architecture, and Borromeo saw “how the pieces behaved in a large space,” and was able to make adjustments.
The Filipino community in Italy has been instrumental in the sustainability of having Philippine representation at La Biennale di Venezia. For the younger Filipino Italian audience, Borromeo said “Andi taku e sana” is meant to show that “Filipino culture is not homogenous, and there is a lot of variety in it.”
It is on view until Nov. 27 in Venice. Eventually, Borromeo said the exhibit will be toured in the Philippines, so the local audience can see the art project that successfully integrated musical notation, sound and video, painting and design, textile weaving and Filipino traditions and elevated them beyond the usual ethnographic narrative.