LESSON 10: INTEGRATING THE LOCAL AND CONTEMPORARY

By the end of this lesson, you are expected to:

 State the main characteristics of the “local” as material for

contemporary art;
 Identify the range of local materials that can be integrated into art;
and
 Demonstrate the ways by which local materials and techniques can
translate concepts and feelings about the local and experiential
through a studio visit and field work.

In preparation for the preparation stage of your creation story, you

will experience first hand the ways in which your local artists integrate local
materials that are easily found and accessed from the immediate
environment into their art. Incorporated the traditional two-dimensional
objects to time-biased, dance music, electronic forms, installation, and other
new or alternative media, these materials can function as found objects and
ready-mades, or as elements of dance, music, sculpture, painting, mixed
media work or installation, as well as production design or animation
material, among others. These options tell us the “local” has to do, not only
with what is homebound and accessible, but also about with what is ever-
changing and fluid. The local involves not just actual spaces but also
virtual, musical and electronic environments, among other realm, which
now make up what is within reach or what can be considered the everyday
for a wired generation learners.
As we also learned in the previous lesson, medium or materials are
not just tangible object which artist use to make art; they also bearers of
ideas and knowledge from people and places that can be translated in ways
that are meaningful and understandable to audiences encountering the
work
In this lesson, examples will be drawn from performance art, a
category from the visual art, which, like the performing art of music, dance,
literature, and theater, also integrates various medium in way that stresses
location, space, and process. Performance art may also involve only one
artist or a full production very similar to theater and may include one or
more sites.
FAQ What is meant by the word “local” and how can it be used as
material for contemporary art?
The “local” can refer to material that is easily available, like bamboo.
The local can also refer to wherever the artist finds himself or herself. For
Diokno Pasilan, a neo-ethnic musician-visual/performance artist and one
time art director from negros the “local” involves various places: Baguio,
Bicol, Palawan (where he resided for a long period), and most recently
Victoria, Western Australia, where he resettled. This process entails
interacting with host communities.
For example, in a performance for the Third Basabas Beach
International Environmental Art Festival in Bicol region, Pasilan
communicates the need to more aware of our natural environment by
painting his body green, color of the environment. Like bungee jumping
human anchor, he trusts himself toward gong tied together unto a bamboo
structure – bamboo being material that is still easily available around
Basabas’s fisherfolk communities. This communities provided information
and Pasilan and other participating artist to create their performance and
site-specific work on the Basabas public beach front.

Another work which used bamboo as basic material is Digital Tagalog, a

collaboration between Lani Maestro and Poklong Anading, artist who are
known for creating multi-sensory environment that come out of their
research about the context of spaces and communities. Shown in Mo Gallery
in 2012, Digital Tagalog used bamboo to construct physical nodes and
create sounds. They also used found and crafted sounds, some of which
were inspired and sourced out of the digitized audio files of National Artist
for Music Jose Maceda (housed in the UP College of Music Center for
Ethnomusicology). This collaborative and combined use of the visual and
musical made the work particularly interactive. The artists encouraged
viewers to be active creators themselves. Within a small room, visitors could
make up playlists which not only could be streamed through personal
listening devices, but also could be amplified within the larger gallery space.
This larger site was where bamboo-made music they themselves produced
could overlay the digitized sound selected by the impromptu musician-
deejays working with sound in the smaller room. Still other artists create
work by reinventing not just tangible objects like bamboo, but other
artforms sourced from the performing arts of ritual, music and dance.
Davao-based choreographer Agnes Locsin used the techniques of modern
dance to reinterpret a component of the Moriones Holy Week festival of
Marinduque. The Moriones narrates the story of Roman centurion Longino's
conversion to Christianity upon the healing of his blindness by the dying
Jesus whom the soldier had been ordered to guard. Performed in France (as
Ballet Philippines's entry to the Recontres Festival Du Danse) by male
dancers moving to “Serra Pelada' of the avant-garde composer Philip Glass,
the dance reinterprets the story through costumes (centurions are shown
without full masks, hefty breastplates, nor swords or spears) and
movements not associated with classical ballet and folk dances. Bodies of
the dancers are sharply angled, with unpointed toes, contorted anatomical
position, and staccato military gestures to dramatize
How do the meaning and our experiences of the artwork changes with the shifts from the town to
stage, with altered space, light, and pace; or from the streets, to installations and electronic
documentation?

And a spartan bamboo set, among others, were also introduced as new
elements in this production.

In the other adaptation and reinvention, local material could also refer to
folk stories. Take the case of the stagging of fugtong: the Black Dog by
community theatre group, Aanak di kaibigan (children of the mountains)
which was organized through the efforts of cordillera Green Network. The
production revolves perceived bringing bad omen. On the level