FILIPINO AMERICA TALKS!

TALK TO ME BABY!

And so it came to pass that the third Artist's Talk at The Living Room came to be. And if I must say so myself, it was perhaps the most successful one so far. The artist of the evening was the current artist-in-residence, Miss Jenifer Wofford, a Fil-Am multi-media artist from Oakland, California, US of A (pictured above chatting with yours truly.)

It was one of the best attended talks, too. The crowd topped off at - ooh, say, around twenty-three. Naturally, that number includes our dear helper, Susan (pictured above, peeking behind Jenifer who is beside my wife Tesa (L), the TLR technical director Denis Lagdameo (R)).

Fellow bloggers, Micketymoc (above on R) and his better half, Minette, as well as Watergirl and her friend, Ashani arrived bright and early. Meanwhile, bringing up the rear at the end of the talk were Susanne Lenz, Tilman Baumgartel, upstairs neighbors Butch, and Coco and Baby of Lumiere. Surreal moment of the evening: PR maven Junjun Poblador swanning in with recently outed Pinoy Brother survivor, Rustom Padilla. I know, wha...why is he here? I really don't know. Just wished I took a picture, though. It isn't very often when post-modern art discourse and Philippine showbiz meet and match.

So after a rather OK sunset on Manila Bay (there have been better ones), we all had a few beers and watched slides of her early sculptures (above). Afterwards, there was a screening of her video works, Cucaracha Motel, Flipflop on a stick, and Chicksilog. Some of the topics discussed that evening were: sculpture vis-a-vis two-dimensional work, the state of art education in the California public school system, feminism, the Filipino diaspora, nurses, her mother, my mother, and someone else's mother, and of course, the joys of her collaborative work with fellow Fil-Ams Eliza Barrios and Reanne Estrada in the renegade performance art trio, Mail Order Brides. It was a good talk, deep but not too pretentious; provocative but non-confrontational.

So after hoo-ing and hah-ing and way too much posing for photos, things finally wrapped up at around ten pm. Some headed off to the Preview Rock Glam party at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, while most of us just retired upstairs for some impromptu pasta.

All in all, I can say art is alive and well in downtown Manila. Hope to see more of you out here at the next artist talk.

CARLOS RECOMMENDS!

PIMP IT BABY!

Oh man, looky looky what I found outside the parking lot of the San Agustin Church! It's like, the ultimate souped up mega-machine to drift around the City of Manila in. I mean, Check it out, dude. It's an oversized, fully air-conditioned, fully loaded jeepney that possesses headroom high enough for a person to stand in. That's so wild. I mean, really, just picture yourself in it, floating around like a boat on a river, with tangerine seats and marmalade tires. Along with you are rocking horse people gobbling on marshmallow pies, drifting past flowers that...

Oops. I digress.

Not being able to help myself, I then knocked on the door, took a look inside and asked the driver at which points does this super-sweet psychedelic vehicle stop. He then turned to me with the sun in his eyes and answered quite slowly: "I go to NAIA, the National Museum, Ayala Center, Coconut Palace, Intramuros, Tiendesitas and pretty much every significant commercial and historical site in Ortigas Center, Makati, and downtown Manila, man." Groovy. Just groovy.

My apologies to the Beatles.

Call Tel. 6870310 or 6874851 or 6345255 to ask how to get onboard.

And also, thanks to yabangpinoy and mahamondo for the shout. Sorry that I have been so busy, I can't possibly post about you in detail. But who knows, maybe you'll get a few clicks from this.

CARLOS RECOMMENDS!

To all Filipinos and their afficionados:

Bored? Then why not look for the roof of your house on earthgoogle. Or better yet, check out MetroManilaMakeover and help them improve our presence on the site by logging on here.

Thank you Roby, Hundred Years, and Anton for the links.

WHEE! WHEE! WHEE!

The Living Room would like to shout out "Congratulations!" to former artist-in-residence, Antoni Abad (above, in pink shirt), for being one of the winners of the Prix Ars Electronica 2006, an international competition which seeks out the best in Cyberarts. His winning entry in the field of digital communities, was www.zexe.net/barcelona - an interactive site in which 40 people with disabilities used mobile phones to photograph their daily lives on the streets of Barcelona. With the help of Multi-Media Messaging, they created a map of every obstacle they came across. Check it out here.

Mabuhay ka, amigo. We hope to see you in Manila again soon.

MY WRITINGS ON THE WALL...

HERE WE GO AGAIN!

A couple of weeks ago, due to some technical, aural, moral, and ethical miscalculations on my part, a draft of this essay was made public. It was only online for a few hours but yet it managed to elicit much response from areas as far as Atlanta, Georgia. Unfortunately, due to this error, the article is now useless to the PCIJ Journal (So sorry Sheila, you can refund the check), the publication for which it was intended. So in order to complete the cycle and to not waste a perfectly good 2000 word essay, here is the article as I want it to be read, with the opening characters now more complex and believable than the last one's hastily made example, and - the grammar corrected. And even though the characters may have changed - trust me - the essence of the article remains the same. My sincerest apologies to all who were hit by the last draft, and my apologies in advance for those who may be hit by this one.

IT'S THE HACIENDA WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: THE DECLINE OF THE FILIPINO SPANISH MESTIZO AT THE DAWN OF THE MILLENIUM

Overheard in Alabang Town Center: "Shet, dude. I'm a cono kid daw. But that's ok."
Inaki Ibaturralde seemed like he had it all. Young, tall, fair, and good-looking, he was a Makati born, Alabang bred, English speaking, Spanish swearing, mestizo of Basque descent. After his secondary education in Manila's premier Opus Dei school, he spent his college years in California, before taking the position of Senior Vice President at his father's Ayala Avenue trading firm at the tender age of twenty eight. In 2003, he married Chavelli Lazarriaga, another fair skinned mestiza with an equally fair family name who worked in Manila's fashion industry. They were wed in a highly publicized ceremony at the San Antonio in Forbes Park and were expecting their second child by the end of last year. Life couldn't seem any more charmed. They were the "IT" couple of the Polo Club and Punta Fuego set; golden examples of Manila's young "alta" society and the touchstone for couples in Manila's millenium generation of de buena familia Spanish mestizos in Dasmarinas Village and Ayala Alabang.

But underneath this espadrille-wearing, tanned-while-jet-skiing-at-Tali facade, something was amiss over at the hacienda, so to speak. Apparently, Inaki had developed a taste for inhaling copious amounts of cocaine. Not an easy habit to cultivate, mind you, as such imported indulgences are mainly available through clandestine deals done in five star hotel rooms at U$350.00 a pop as opposed to the Php1500.00 per-bag-on-the-street-corner deals for it's local "masa" counterpart, "shabu" (Crystal Metamphetamine). And for the past few years, Inaki miraculously managed to keep this sordid detail under wraps - from both wife and family - until things started unravelling - and quite messily at that - at home.

It was only a year after his third wedding anniversary that Inaki started acting out of sorts. Due to limited access to family bank accounts, Inaki had resorted to "shabu" and the addiction had taken it's toll. Inaki looked bloated and sweaty at business meetings and his habit of locking himself into the downstairs den (sometimes for up to two days) was something which began to concern his young wife. Nevertheless, his habit remained overlooked - perhaps subconsciously - by those around him until last Christmas eve when his mother's maid found drug paraphernalia (crystal pipe and a roll of tinfoil) in the front seat of his car while transferring Christmas presents to the tree. So after a rather audible confrontation, Inaki was banished from his wife, family and their digs above his mother's garage to fend for himself. Nothing was heard of him until a month ago, when a segment on the evening news revealed that Inaki had knifed a tricycle driver in United Paranaque while in a frantic state of paranoia. Today, he sits in a rehabilitation center in Bicutan, his wife now settled in the United States with both children, far away from the scandal and shame. The golden boy now tarnished in the eyes of the upper crust - an outcast from the walls of his city.

Now although the aforementioned is merely an extreme composite of characters, sadly, Inaki's story is not a rare one one among the families of Manila's todo insular, Royal Ambre scented crowd. His story is that of a promise unfulfilled; a morality tale about the importance of restraint and self-confidence and an image symbolic of the state of Hispanic Filipinos the 21st century. It's a metaphor about his ancestry, that of Spanish mestizos, also known as "tisoys" or "cono kids" - a monicker derived from their habit of peppering conversations with the aforementioned "c" word. They are a people that have lost their footing in this world, and have no idea how to go about standing up and finding it once again.

But how did the "tisoy", once a proud, plentiful, and productive breed found freely grazing and settling in the open districts of Ermita, Malate, Pasay, and San Miguel, fall so far from the status that they enjoyed in the Philippines for hundreds of years? From the 19th century until the mid-seventies, the "tisoy" and his culture were ubiquitous to the Philippine landscape. From the hallways of the country's corporations to the billboards which trimmed our highways, the images of Spanish mestizeria could be found managing multinational corporations or modelling the latest fashions. Manning shop counters at the Escolta, counting cash behind bank windows, or serving coffee in the sky, mestizos and mestizas were everywhere. But in an amazingly ironic turn of events, from being the dominant culture which the populace yearned to emulate, they now find themselves marginalized and struggling to find their position in a Filipinas that has decided to fully embrace it's Asian roots in the twenty-first century. Just turn on the television or watch a movie and the glaring irrelevance of the mestizo will immediately stare back at you. Gone are the days of the artista male romantic lead in the mold of Rogelio dela Rosa, Edu Manzano, or Gabby Concepcion. Even mestizos de entresuelos (mestizong bangus or quasi-mestizo mestizos) like Kuya Germs Moreno or Redford White are also fast disappearing from the showbiz firmament. It's obvious that the white skinned, aqualine nosed template has ceased to be the pinnacle of male physical aspiration and in it's place we now find the chinky charm of the late Rico Yan or the moreno mein of Piolo Pascual. And instead of living near to their forefather's ancestral lands near the walled city of Intramuros, Spanish mestizos now find themselves commuting back and forth from the newer gated districts of Makati, Paranaque, and Alabang. The displacement of their home and their culture was a cruel fate that had crept up without warning. But how did this come to be? Nobody can say for sure. One can only hypothesize.

Perhaps it's because they lost their home?
Overheard at a tour from a guest: "These mestizos really liked their walled cities.."
It was only when I heard this statement that I realized the concept of the "gated community" is something that has always been integral to the personality of Manila. The notion of a society that is "within" and one that is "without" is still as prelevant today as it was in the times of Jose Rizal. Just replace the subdivision security guards with the guardia civil and the Household helpers ID/Community Tax Certificate with the cedula and it's Noli Me Tangere with a cheaper wardrobe budget. But although the system still remains, Intramuros - the city where this system originated has been gone for over 61 years now, destroyed in February of 1945. In a battle between the Japanese Imperial army and the US Armed Forces at the close of World War II, this 400-year old Spanish designed walled city, and the most overt physical manifestation of Spain's influence in the Orient became the central war theatre within the capital. After a month of heavy fighting, this city made of coral, volcanic ash, and wood, inspired by designs from France, Madrid, and England, was pummeled to dust; the largest and only specimen of Spain's presence in Asia wiped off the face of the earth. Most everything we see today, with the excepton of San Agustin Church; is a post-war reconstruction. And not only was the walled city obliterated; but the Spanish mestizo residential enclaves of Ermita, Malate, Sampaloc, and Pasay were left in ashes, their fair skinned residents massacred and buried in mass graves. Even the "tisoy" commercial playground that was Escolta in Santa Cruz - a place so patrician that salesgirls even had to speak Spanish - was reduced to rubble. It was really after this period that slow migration of the surviving mestizos began. Perhaps driven away by the bitter memories of the war or by the encroaching displaced rural poor, they first wandered off into the promised - and gated - land of Makati suburbia in the 1950's, then into newer, flashier digs in Ayala Alabang in the 1980's. But for those mestizos who ended up in the more middle class spectrum of the social ladder by the 1970's, there were the gates of Merville and BF Homes to keep the sweaty toiling extramuros communities at bay.

Eventually, with the coming of President Marcos, things would come to a head for the mestizo. Although the martial law era can be perceived as oppressive on one hand, it was also a period when a cohesive Malay identity was established for the Filipino through the cultural efforts of Marcos' New Society Movement. It the first times in Philippine history that the Malay Identity was truly celebrated in all aspects of Filipino life. Government programs, cultural events, and even public architecture all had to celebrate this newfound yet ancient identity promoted by the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan or The New Society Movement. Ako ay Pilipino. We're here, we're brown, get used to it. And it didn't only show in the architecture, it showed in media as well. The mestiza look of Rosa Rosal and Gloria Romero was out, and it was the morena template of Alma Moreno and Gloria Diaz that became the "wet look" of the moment. It was at this period that many "tisoys" ended up leaving altogether, moving away and settling into happy white-collared/white-colored existences in Australia or the United States, the promise of a new start and identity beckoning them away from their Philippine past.

Perhaps they lost their entitlement?
Overheard at a couturier: "Mestizos were never taught how to work.."
A rather shocking statement but one that cannot be dismissed because it really is a peek into the preconceived notions many Filipinos have about their Hispanic counterparts. Myth number one. Spanish mestizos are lazy. Myth number two. Spanish mestizos are all heirs with endowments and assets. Both not necessarily true. Mestizos dicks have never been bigger, they've only been whiter. Just as Spanish mestizos have never been richer, they only seemed like they were. Perhaps this sense of entitlement came about because historically, Spanish mestizos have never really been part of the manual labor force. Occupations for tisoys were pretty much white-collared and handed down to them as a birthright; some careers even assured way before they were out of diapers. For the rural mestizo, all he had to do was wait for harvest season to come round and the income would almost generate itself. And at the end of it all, when daddy died, the land - and workers on it - were all his to possess. And for the urban mestizo, all he had to do was depend upon Manila's old boy's club run by The Ateneo/La Salle/et al alumnus association to assure them of the exact same jobs that their fathers also toiled. But now, Spanish mestizo founded corporations like Philippine Airlines, and San Miguel Corporation are out of their original owners hands (The Todas for PAL, the Sorianos for SMC); and now have to restructure themselves away to be competitive in the modern world. Some tisoys found it harder to compete for that same job in a system now based on merit than on who was their dad's fraternity brother. And due to this, quite a few them decided to forego the hassle of asserting himself and finding a new identity within this revamped society, and instead take the alternate route of migrating into the promise of a tabula rasa in cities like San Francisco or Sydney (See the last part of previous paragraph).

Or maybe they just never wanted to be here in the first place:
Once told to my face: "Ay, Carlos. Mestizos. They're all liars."
The most freaky of all the statements I've heard, but once again, perhaps it rings true. Could it be that the Spanish mestizo, who never felt neither at home in the Philippine archipelago nor in the Iberian peninsula, could be cursed to roam the world never to find his stead? Cursed to forever live in gated communities with all the insularities it brings? After all, Inaki's family was so detached from the fact that their family lived in a Southeast Asian country in the Pacific that they even maintained their Spanish passports and spoke Spanish at the dining table. His own mother would go out of her way to let everyone now that their family was NOT to be considered part of the brown-ness which surrounded them. She once commented about her other, darker daughter-in-law: "Oye, Es guapa. Por una Filipina." ("She is pretty. For a Filipina.") Aesthetically, The Ibaturraldes were known for their fondness of bullfighting posters, ashtrays which said: "Fuma menos, cono" (Smoke less, expletive meaning vagina), and for the blue and white porcelain tile emblazoned with the words: "Dios Bendiga Cada Rincon en Esta Casa" (Lord Bless Every Corner of This House) hanging above their front door; mandatory household items for the aspirationally Iberian. And with this lack of desire to integrate - both culturally and aesthetically - perhaps we can say that the Spanish mestizo doesn't want to be at home in the Philippines at all. He would rather embrace the romantic notion of an Occidental Philippines that cannot be, than to become part of the Oriental Philippines which exists before him right now. And with this decision to deny the context which surrounds oneself, comes the corresponding consequences: The insecurity of never being accepted and the paranoia that someone out there is always trying to get you. Time to build those walls again.

Carlos Celdran, 33, is a married, part-Spanish, part-Chinese, part-Filipino performance artist but is considered by most to be a dyed-in-the-wool cono kid even though his Spanish sucks and he hates Lengua Estofada. He does walking tours of the old city of Intramuros and other Manila historic districts. His tour schedules and other opinions can be found on http:celdrantours.blogspot.com

LIVING LA VIUDA LOCA! AND HI MOM!

Madame Marcos turns seventy-seven today.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY IMELDA!

Oh, and also, Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Thanks a million Gabe Arcenas of Moonwerks for the great new look for my header. Click here to see more stuff from Moonwerks.com

CARLOS RECOMMENDS!

FASHION FORWARD HO!
Great blog. MNLSTYL is a new blog by my friend, Cecile of Chuvaness.

And although I might be an entry here, let me say quite frankly that I am the farthest thing from a fashionista. I make no claims whatsoever to know anything about style and clothing and you can write that down on stone. In fact, the photo of my paunch and crappy polyester sidebag makes me come across more as a fashion-don't than as a fashion-do. Actually, I like this site merely because it is in keeping with my ambition to change the way Manila looks through the way one looks at Manila. And with Cecile, it seems she believes that what Manilenos wear on the outside can be a reflection of what they are on the inside and that style does not have to suffer simply because one lives in the third world.

Click here.

BARZA TALKED!

Better late than never, I always say. I know it's been over two months since I hosted an artist talk with The Living Room's artist-in-residence, Antoni Abad. Needless to say, all went the well. The sunset was beautiful - as usual. The beers were Dutch - though not as in it was imported from Amsterdam, but as in people brought their own. And the artist, like most Catalans, was polite, open and amiable (photo above of the artist, in pink shirt, shaking hands with guest).

So after guests snacked on peanuts and cheese, guests were given collaterals about Antoni's oeuvre to read, stickers to play with (above), and the website zexe.net to surf through (below), before Antoni and I sat down to have an hour long conversation about his creative processes and his experiences in Manila.

The topics we discussed ranged from international geopolitics, the emerging call center industry in the Philippines, GSM cell phone technology, the secret lives of call center agents, and naturally, the contemporary art scene in Manila.

Throughout the evening, nobody drank too much and puked, asked inappropriate questions about politics and/or religion, or stole anything from the bathrooms of the gallery. All in all, the event could be considered a successful, if not peaceful, event. The crowd broke up at around eight thirty in the evening to dine at separate locations. Some went to the Jumbo by Manila Bay, others retired to ever consistent artsy bar, Cafe 604 (Penguin) for beers and panini sandwiches.

I hope tomorrow's art talk with the current artist in residence, Jennifer Wofford, would go just as smoothly. Thanks a million, At Maculangan (above with camera) and Katya for all the help and the photos of the talk.

PS. Tomorrow is Manila Day. Please note that Roxas Boulevard will be closed from three in the afternoon until midnight. If driving, use Taft Avenue and Quirino or use public transportation if possible.

FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!

Although "Keys Me" was way more complex in it's relentless misuse of the English language, this "Flash Report" also has the makings of another classic.