Where do you locate yourself as an artist, both geographically and professionally? It is actually a curious question, especially for those who are located in the mainstreams of the art world, that is in cultural capitals of Europe and the US. They are born, grown and honed into these systems of art production, valuation and presentation that it seems the question is really about how to stand out, make one's work visible, distinct among others. But in post-colonial, post-war or politically emergent democratic societies, you cannot be but find yourself in the periphery, at the banks where small eddies of swirling water can be descriptive of the art scene goings-on locally, which are but the fringes of the wake of a larger surge of capital and activity happening elsewhere.
In New York I am located in a position to observe that "elsewhere", here, now. If I were a storm-chaser, then I have just parked my car under the eye of a hurricane to watch the surge, the windspeed at its epicenter. People back home assume that I'll be looking for opportunities here to catch some streams, to be part of the maelstrom: I'm not. Because as an artist the choice and the decision to locate yourself is not a matter of market opportunity alone. Inasmuch as squatting near the security fences of a Manor House does not make you a resident or even a lord, being near or even in contact with the community of contemporary art (powerbrokers and all) does not create transfers of power and prestige. Its just plain silly. You cannot teach bamboo to grow in an apple orchard just because you put it there.
Like transplanting a tree from the tropics to the north, one should consider: can the weather, the climate that made me flourish also do the same elsewhere? Its a matter of intuition and gut-level sentiment. But one can argue that human beings can overcome adversity and cope, it has proven effective. But again, how many immigrants, how many struggling artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat have the golden opportunity to make the cut, somehow and blossom?
It is the height of supreme hubris to say that anything can be willed, anything can be mastered, anything can be subdued, including all organic trajectories of nature. If anything, Hurricane Sandy has reminded this metropolis that all those expansions of lower Manhattan to create more real estate does not matter to the sea. Water knows its own, regardless of what the heck we think. So too, the movement and persuasions of what we can call the soul: it is organic and knows its own level and range. Rather than force this specimen, this soul to mutate in the company of cockroaches and odd jobs, allow it to find its own range where it can create in peace. (Often I wonder if this is the reason why a lot of so-called contemporary artists have either dystopian, apocalyptic and neurotic content in their work: they are simply out of context).
I met up with a friend, a Filipino artist, who prior to his migration to the US five years ago was a key figure among the progressive groups of painters in Manila. I have encountered a number of former art school associates and acquaintances telling me the same story that they cannot spend too much time to pursue an art career in New York simply because they have to find some employment or two. I expected him to say the same thing but to my surprise (and admiration) he said he is indeed a full-time artist based in Jersey City. As of late, he still manages to use art as source of dependable cash flow, staggered as it is. But like all other artists working in the highly competitive scene whose gravitational center is somewhere in the vicinity of 5th ave in Manhattan, he thinks there should be more opportunities, more openness and more interest towards up-and-coming or relatively unknown artists. Meanwhile a long-time Brooklyn-based Filipino artist is coming to his own, being featured in the NY Times and in museums in the city. Then in the same conversation a curator from Singapore joins in and basically extolls the wisdom that you have to know your community first, before you can claim them as constituents of your work.
I agree on this principle. Know your community. That is what I mean by locating my practice in geography and profession. Artists assume that their practice gives them access to a conjured "community of connoisseurs" somewhere gathered in corners like the Rockefeller Center or the board rooms of the Guggenheim or at the back offices of big-name galleries. This exists only at the same level where Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster hold their domain: nowhere. But in art schools in the Philippines, this is the Canaan of all their journeys. It took me a while to realize that what is considered "international art scene" is a pipe dream, or a marketing promise. What truly exists are patches of communities of networks where art is studied, taught, transferred, eulogized, evangelized, sold, traded, lost, found, validated, devalued, contested and won. And most of the time all these communities share relationships and tangible exchanges. They are, in fact, just people. Plain, human-all-too-human people, trying to transact their business with other people: the vicissitudes of taste.
We are not in Babylon.
In New York I am located in a position to observe that "elsewhere", here, now. If I were a storm-chaser, then I have just parked my car under the eye of a hurricane to watch the surge, the windspeed at its epicenter. People back home assume that I'll be looking for opportunities here to catch some streams, to be part of the maelstrom: I'm not. Because as an artist the choice and the decision to locate yourself is not a matter of market opportunity alone. Inasmuch as squatting near the security fences of a Manor House does not make you a resident or even a lord, being near or even in contact with the community of contemporary art (powerbrokers and all) does not create transfers of power and prestige. Its just plain silly. You cannot teach bamboo to grow in an apple orchard just because you put it there.
Like transplanting a tree from the tropics to the north, one should consider: can the weather, the climate that made me flourish also do the same elsewhere? Its a matter of intuition and gut-level sentiment. But one can argue that human beings can overcome adversity and cope, it has proven effective. But again, how many immigrants, how many struggling artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat have the golden opportunity to make the cut, somehow and blossom?
It is the height of supreme hubris to say that anything can be willed, anything can be mastered, anything can be subdued, including all organic trajectories of nature. If anything, Hurricane Sandy has reminded this metropolis that all those expansions of lower Manhattan to create more real estate does not matter to the sea. Water knows its own, regardless of what the heck we think. So too, the movement and persuasions of what we can call the soul: it is organic and knows its own level and range. Rather than force this specimen, this soul to mutate in the company of cockroaches and odd jobs, allow it to find its own range where it can create in peace. (Often I wonder if this is the reason why a lot of so-called contemporary artists have either dystopian, apocalyptic and neurotic content in their work: they are simply out of context).
I met up with a friend, a Filipino artist, who prior to his migration to the US five years ago was a key figure among the progressive groups of painters in Manila. I have encountered a number of former art school associates and acquaintances telling me the same story that they cannot spend too much time to pursue an art career in New York simply because they have to find some employment or two. I expected him to say the same thing but to my surprise (and admiration) he said he is indeed a full-time artist based in Jersey City. As of late, he still manages to use art as source of dependable cash flow, staggered as it is. But like all other artists working in the highly competitive scene whose gravitational center is somewhere in the vicinity of 5th ave in Manhattan, he thinks there should be more opportunities, more openness and more interest towards up-and-coming or relatively unknown artists. Meanwhile a long-time Brooklyn-based Filipino artist is coming to his own, being featured in the NY Times and in museums in the city. Then in the same conversation a curator from Singapore joins in and basically extolls the wisdom that you have to know your community first, before you can claim them as constituents of your work.
I agree on this principle. Know your community. That is what I mean by locating my practice in geography and profession. Artists assume that their practice gives them access to a conjured "community of connoisseurs" somewhere gathered in corners like the Rockefeller Center or the board rooms of the Guggenheim or at the back offices of big-name galleries. This exists only at the same level where Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster hold their domain: nowhere. But in art schools in the Philippines, this is the Canaan of all their journeys. It took me a while to realize that what is considered "international art scene" is a pipe dream, or a marketing promise. What truly exists are patches of communities of networks where art is studied, taught, transferred, eulogized, evangelized, sold, traded, lost, found, validated, devalued, contested and won. And most of the time all these communities share relationships and tangible exchanges. They are, in fact, just people. Plain, human-all-too-human people, trying to transact their business with other people: the vicissitudes of taste.
We are not in Babylon.
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