LESSON 6: SUPPORT

SYSTEMS,
INSTITUTIONS, AND
INITIAVES ACROSS THE
REGION
 What is Support System of the Arts?
Support System of the Arts include:
a. institutions
b. organizations and collectives
c. media
d. alternative platforms

These support systems provide the environment for facilitating production and the
circulation or distribution of the art. Historically, support systems are often linked to
patronage.
Today, as artists and cultural workers exercise their agency or self-will in their
perspective practices, much has changed in today’s landscape of support systems.
The latter creates a public for art by initiating events and activities that are not
necessarily about money exchange. These newer type of support systems ensure that
Different types of Institutions, Organizations, and Platforms

-The support systems can be government-initiated, community or municipality-

based, privately supported, university oriented, artist-run, or Internet-based.
-Collectives and artist organizations are composed of individuals who share
similar or related practices. They are committed to experiment and develop
their particular forms. Organizations can also emphasize their regional
affiliation, as in the Black Artist of Asia which, at its height were made up of
artist from Negros.
-Pursuing progressive as well as digital media, their material is configured
toward promoting the rights of “marginalized sectors and their struggle for
social justice”, according to the statement from their website.
Educational institutions such as schools and universities
offer formal artistic training and grant degrees upon
completion of an academic program at the tertiary or
post-graduate level.
The academe is an extensive training ground for artist,
curators, scholar-critics, and other practitioners in the
arts, thereby imbuing individuals who pursue academic
activities the status of experts. The academe as a
platform for producing and disseminating knowledge in
art also makes it a validating institution.
Aspiring artists enroll in the various art programs of the school
to gain in-depth training, receive mentorship from artist-
teachers, and camaraderie from peers. On the other hand, an
exemplary case of an institution offering focused artistic
training as early as the secondary level is the nationally
mandated Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA) in Los
Baños, Laguna. It provides holistic training to selected high
school students who study various fields on a scholarship with
free board and lodging within the campus carved out of Mt.
Makiling. They major in the Visual Arts, Creative Writing,
Theater Arts, Dance, and Music.
Artist exposure and training can be enhanced beyond the art school
through residencies. Artist Residencies are based on a program
supported by foundations, cultural organizations, or private entities.
Here, the artist spends a period of time in a studio or community where
he/she will develop an art project, like an exhibition or a performance.
It may be collaborative, involving fellow local, national and foreign
artists or people from the community.
Casa San Miguel, located in the Pandaquit fishing village in San Antonio,
Zambales offers training in music and the visual arts at the grassroots
level. In some cases, Artist Residencies provide a less structured
program by allowing artist to engage in exposure or the other
exploratory activities that do not necessarily require a final project.
Non-government and academic sectors have also actively taken
part in the staging of contemporary theatrical performances in
the country foremost of which are the PETA (Philippine
Educational Theater Association) Kalinangan Esemble which
stages original works and translations for community theater
perfomances; the Tanghalang Ateneo that stages both Filipino
plays and adaptations of the classics; Teatro Tomasino of the
University of Santo Tomas which stages original plays written by
students; and, Dulaang UP which stages the classic in both
English and Filipino, original plays written by Filipinos, and even
traditional sarswelas and musical theater.
In the 1970’s, dance choreographers such as National
Artist Leonor Orosa Goquinco (awarded 1976) thought
of creating a fusion between classical ballet (a western
art form) and Philippine folk dances. She created the
Filipinescas Dance Troupe which toured many cities
around the world.
Ramon Obusan, a Bayanihan Dance Company member
and National Artists for Dance (awarded 2006),
decided to travel the entire country to study and
document traditional folk dances in their native milieu
not only for the sake of authenticity, but to provide a
social context to various tribal and ethnic dances and
how these interfaced with culture, tradition, and
ritual.
In the mid 1970s, a thespian from Manila, Frank Rivera, traveled
to Marawi in Mindanao and with the help of the Marawi State
University, formed the Sining Kambayoka Theater Group which
made use of traditional Maranao folktales and more current
issues that concerned the Muslim communities of Mindanao.
The research climate prior to 1997 may have been more liberal
or permissive in the absence of a law protecting the
community’s “intellectual rights.” Under the Indigenous People’s
Rights Act of 1997, manifestations of the IP’s culture like songs,
dances, and rituals shall not be documented without their free,
prior, and informed consent.
There are several provincial dance companies which
still perform traditional folk dances and compete
regularly in folk dancing competitions. They are the:
1. Kalilayan Folkloric Dance Group
2. The University of San Carlos Dance Troupe
3. The Hiyas ng Maynilad Dance Troupe
4. The Leyte Dance Theater
5. The University of the Philippines Filipina Dance Troupe
6. The Lyceum of Batangas Folk Dance Company
Today, Philippine dance has taken on a chameleon-like identity in
the sense that it straddles seamlessly between hiphop, ballet,
local folk dancing, and even contemporary dance.
The Neoclassical Architecture of the National Museum of the
Philippines in Manila exudes an aura of grandeur, leaving
beholders with the impression that the objects inside it are
treasures worthy of historical remembrance. A museum may be
as large-scale as the National Museum, which houses an art
gallery and ethnographic collection in its main branch. Or it may
also operate at a small-scale like community museums that
privilege memory and the local people’s pride of place.
The state-body National Commission for Culture and
the Arts (NCCA) provides the infrastructure for either
wholly or partially government-funded projects on
Philippine Art and Culture. Aside from granting awards
and enabling exhibition or performance venues,
another responsibility of NCCA is ensuring the
nationwide representation and support to regions not
normally perceived as centers of artistic practice.
Sungdu-an is a series of cross-regional efforts that began
in 1996 comprising of traveling exhibitions, consultations,
and curatorial workshops. Sungdu-an derived from Waray
term meaning “confluence”, stimulated a spirit of
exchange and collaboration among a good number of
artists and practitioners coming from various places.
The Current, signifying recentness and passage of
knowledge. It also refers to the force or inspirations that
continues to propel artists in their respective practices.
Kiri Dalena translated the cracked and dismembered
terracotta figures of rallyists crouching in defense of
truncheons into an installation of wood pieces
referencing the clay figures as carved sculptors from
Pakil, Laguna.
Contemporary art exhibitions need not to be confined
within the “white cube” environment of galleries and
museums. Exhibitions can take place in alternative
spaces, or the outdoors, in public spaces within a limited
period of time.
An alternative space is an independent and/or an artist-run initiative
that deviates from rigid institutional models where exhibition
parameters are usually less flexible. With a paltry budget and a
loose, form of management, the projects imbibe a “do-it-yourself”
attitude, and as such, their physical life span as a sustainable space
tends to be always at risk. Project Space Pilipinas (PSP) a collective
formed by Quezon-based artist Leslie de Chavez. It recently
established a small structure in Lucban to be able to host artist
residencies and exhibitions. They also aim to draw attention to the
contemporary art scene in Lucban, a place more well-known for its
exuberant Pahiyas Festial held every 15th of May in honor of San
Isidro Labrador.
Festival is a mode of exhibition that is transitory and
participatory, closely related to religion, ritual, culture, and
tourism. Festivals of contemporary art in some ways have
appropriated the protocols of festivals in order to link art
mode closely with everyday life. The Neo-Angono Public Art
Festival is one of the example. Its name comes from the artist
collective that organizes the festival year after year just
before the official town fiesta. In the public art festival, the
buildings, the streets, and the waterways, are used as sites for
exhibitions, performances, film viewings, and other activities.
If museums are spaces of knowledge production, and
galleries of consumption, auction houses and art fairs are
places that specifically respond to the market, in this
context, art is regarded as a commodity and therefore
potential property and investment. Galleries provide
representation for artists, exhibiting their works and
transacting with patrons or “clients” on their behalf. Art
fairs are short-term events where several galleries exhibit
and sell art in one large venue, like a park, or inside a mall
or even a parking area converted into fairgrounds.
Contests and awards encourage artists to create a
new work, keep pursuing their practice, and recognize
outstanding artistic achievements based on certain
criteria.
In terms of Literature, the Carlos Palanca Annual
Awards has been the leading award giving body that
has encouraged and acknowledged the works of
Filipino playwrights, novelists, poets and scriptwriters
from film and television for almost three decades.
Foundations and corporations helm these activities as part of
their outreach or corporates social responsibility in some cases.
They reward artists and at the same time, their image is
enhanced with this gestures of support for arts and culture.
These organizations tends to acquire works of art to build up
their corporate collection.
Television, radio, social media, and print media like magazines
and newspapers are platforms that disseminate artistic efforts
and shape people’s attitudes toward art. Knowledge imparted
though these platforms is neither natural nor neutral, but
constructed according to certain leanings and ideologies.
The popularity of the internet and social media has been
revolutionized the way we connect and communicate
with others for instance but also brings up questions of
digital access and communication savvy.
In the article “Find Me If You Facebook”, Professor EJ
Westlake, wrote that social networking site such as
Facebook “provides a forum for both immediate and
asynchronous social interaction, creating a collaborative,
interactive, and performative text.”
Magazine, which came out in the late 1950s such as
Liwayway and its regional counterparts Bisaya and
Amiyanan published the works of regional writers who
were enjoyed by a wider target audience more
comfortable reading fiction in their mother tongue.
Since the 1950s and on the 1970s and 1980s, there has
always been an ongoing debate as to whether English or
Tagalog should be the language of Philippine Literature,
but as today language is no longer an issue as the rule of
thumb is any Philippine language.
Estrella D. Alfon is one of the more distinguished, contemporary
Filipino writer who wrote both in English and in her mother
tongue Cebuano. She is a fictionist, poet and playwright who
was comfortable writing in English as she was in Cebuano. She
was also one of the more renowned feminist writers of her
generation.
In lieu of costly printed publications, various writing on
contemporary art can be downloaded from the website.
Support systems affect the way art is produced, encountered,
and valued. As such, their workings are intrinsically linked with
issues of access and power.
Art can be presented in varied ways. It need not conform to
rigid institutional models, or only the dictates of the media and
the market. Many art projects benefit from sharing of resources
and collaborative efforts of collectives and various members of
the community. Particularly with the respect to exhibitions that
travel or involve multiple sites, the process of creation and
curation are shared by people beyond the art world. These
instances signal to us that art is constantly changing. Art can be
a form of articulation critical of a wide range of issues. It can be
also a form critical of itself, and the support systems that claim
to define it.
 LESSON 6: SUPPORT SYSTEMS,
INSTITUTIONS, AND INITIAVES ACROSS
THE REGION