PAPAYAPOST

Serial Killers: Welcome to the Club! in Singapore

2011-11-07T01:59:00.000-08:00

At Maculangan, Equinox, 2011.

Green Papaya Art Projects and TAKSU Singapore brings together recent works by Filipino artists on the second installment of Serial Killers, curated by GP Director, Norberto Roldan.

As the independent art scene in Manila wanes into the background after such seminal independent spaces as Surrounded by Water, Big Sky Mind and Future Prospects closed shop a few years back, commercial galleries have moved to bigger and better spaces along Makati City’s Pasong Tamo Avenue, an old industrial district fast becoming the country’s premier art destination. Though it may seem that the commercial gallery system has taken over the initiative of vigorously promoting Philippine contemporary art to the outside world, it’s quite difficult to detach this development from its purely commercial intent and thus presents a context of art-making that has become not quite unexpectedly problematic for a number of Filipino artists. This scenario only heightens the fact that today the role of the market, its support institutions and collector base has been acknowledged as crucial to artists’ careers and the progress of their practice. Making the move from the category of promising and emerging, or from a low-key and under-rated, to a successful mid-career practitioner a more arduous task. And this is so much true for artists who have been practicing at the edge or even outside of the radar of the market.

Argie Bandoy, Order of the Negatives, 2011

Serial Killers: Welcome to the Club appears to be an oxymoron against the prevailing art environment and the works (varied as they are) unmindful of the flattering spectacle delivered by hyper-branded art fairs and biennales in the region. But being outside this orbit is precisely the trajectory of the exhibition. A dissonance of sort, not anti-commercial, just claiming a piece of ground in this highly contested and complex cultural territory. This selection, which comes from diverse disciplines as painting, graphic arts, photography, film, music, performance and new media, will have to contend with the rules of engagement set by the present infrastructure.

Serial Killers, a product of a long-standing collaboration between TAKSU and Green Papaya Art Projects under its Crossborder Projects, comes at the heels of an independent initiative banking headstrong on a premise that Filipino artists are not totally caught up in a maze of hierarchy influenced by the bullish market for Southeast Asian art. The works of Argie Bandoy, Patricia Eustaquio, Jonathan Olazo, Jayson Oliveria, Maria Taniguchi, MM Yu, At Maculangan, Pardo de Leon, Jed Escueta, Al Cruz, Khavn de la Cruz and Fando&Lis will maintain that artist-driven forces, other than those driven by other external conditions, still make up the core of independent art-making in Manila. Welcome to the Club.

SERIAL KILLERS /WELCOME TO THE CLUB is a part of PHILIPPINE ART TREK V, a project of the Philippine Embassy in Singapore.

Pardo De Leon, Related Stories, 2010.

Jed Escueta, Amicusaurus, 2010.

Opening reception: Wednesday, 9 November 2011, 6.30-10.30pm, with Guest of Honor Mr. Jose Isidro Camacho, Vice Chairman for Asia Pacific of Credit Suisse.

Featuring a film screening by Khavn de la Cruz, the Philippines' internationally acclaimed and multi-awarded digital film maker, with a live score performance by Fando & Lis, post-rock/neo-folk duo from Manila's independent music scene.

Fando and Lis

Opening Immemorial - Reaching Back Beyond Memory

2011-10-21T18:39:00.001-07:00

IMMEMORIAL - REACHING BACK BEYOND MEMORY
OCTOBER 27 - NOVEMBER 27 2011

Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 26, 7:00pm

Chan Contemporary Art Space State Square, Darwin, opposite Parliament House Darwin, Australia

ARTISTS:
Catriona Stanton, Hayley West, Julie Gough, Min Wong, Pip McManus, Simon Cooper, Tobias Richardson, Lashita Situmorang, Wimo Ambala Bayang, Caroline Rika Winata, Lyra Garcellano, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Jed Escueta

CURATORS:
Sudjud Dartanto (Independent Curator and Lecturer Indonesia Institute of Art, Yogyakarta, Indonesia), Norberto Roldan (Director Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila, Philippines) , Steve Eland (Director 24HR Art - Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin, Australia)

Immemorial-reaching back beyond memory offers an extraordinary cultural exchange within a current social and political context, endeavoring to invigorate dialogue between cultures. The curatorial rationale of Immemorial-reaching back beyond memory seeks to investigate commonalities of people from diverse backgrounds and cultures, as they consider their ancestral histories and their present notions of cultural identity. Too often, cultural identity concentrates on the 'differences', particularly in current global political environments; concepts of 'difference' can at times be an irrational construct used for the purposes of division. Immemorial-reaching back beyond memory aims to break down these notions of 'difference' by transplanting ancestral investigations and common accounts into an exploratory visual language, invigorating discourse on cultural perspectives. Throughout history people have migrated or dispersed by choice, force or need. The curators, in developing the rationale, believe family stories of journeys,displacements, triumphs, interruptions and secrets transcend political boundaries as recognizable common threads. The rationale incorporates a much broader notion of cultural identity, many family histories have universal elements; these elements are not confined nor controlled by geographic or sovereign boundaries.

Climate Change Report with Green Papaya Art Projects

2011-10-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE REDD+ REPORT

THE PHILIPPINE FORESTS: BEFORE AND WHAT NOW? A MULTI-MEDIA EXHIBITION PRESENTED BY

DEUTSCHE GESELLSCHAFT FÜR INTERNATIONALE ZUSAMMENARBEIT (GIZ) GMBH

AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Curated by NORBERTO ROLDAN / Design by TOUKI ROLDAN / Video by RED LASAM / Original Score by RIA MUÑOZ

October 14-16, 2011, La Plaza Tiendesitas, Pasig City

Green Papaya Art Projects is privileged to have been commissioned by the German Development Cooperation GIZ in partnership with the DENR-Climate Change Office to curate and design a multi-media exhibition as part of an information campaign on climate change.

74 years ago 60 percent or about 18 million hectares of the land in the Philippines was covered by forests. By 2003, forest cover dwindled to 7 million hectares. It has been found that forest loss annually is 157,000 ha or roughly the size of 3.5 million basketball courts! About 17% of global emissions are due to loss of tropical forests. Destroyed forests mean more carbon dioxide in the air. The Philippines now regularly suffers from landslides, flooding and drought, increasing temperature and intensity of rainfall due to climate change.

Forests regulate the planet’s climate by absorbing the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Our planet processes greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide to make it liveable. Without this process our planet will be too cold. But an overload would make our planet too warm.

REDD+ is a new and more effective approach to conservation by avoiding further deterioration of forests and emissions of greenhouse gases while generating benefits. REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.

Forests are renewable assets. Community-based Forest Management is a key in addressing deforestation and forest degradation. If local communities are given access to and control of forest resources and allowed to benefit from them, they will be responsible stewards and hence effective partners in the promotion of sustainable forest management.

12 Filipino Artists in TAKSU Malaysia

2011-06-09T15:02:00.001-07:00

Metallurgy of Desire (details), series 2008 by Conrado Velasco, collage with silver tinsels, 29.6 x 22.3 cm

SERIAL KILLERS / THE HEAT IS ON
June 9 - July 3, 2011

Argie Bandoy, Patricia Eustaquio, Lyra Garcellano, Nona Garcia, Pow Martinez, Jonathan Olazo, Jayson Oliveria, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Norberto Roldan, Maria Taniguchi, Conrado Velasco and MM Yu.

Following the success of the recent Serial Killers: From Tate Modern to TAKSU SingaporeSerial Killers (November 2010), TAKSU and Green Papaya Art Projects continue to introduce the best of Manila’s contemporary art to the region. An exhibition program started in 2008 by independent artist-run-initiative Green Papaya Art Projects in Manila, is a response to parallel notions of seriality, non-seriality, or counter-seriality. Seriality as conceptual strategy or considered by most critics as a postmodern aesthetic, attempts to find resonance in the works of artists in their seemingly endless body of work, blurring randomness, and, or predetermination, in their repetitiousness. Repetition and seriality have been a recurrent mode of artistic production to some of the most prolific contemporary artists. Scholars of semiotics believe that, today, there is in operation a sense of aesthetic repetition involving a radical conception of seriality: one that 'wholly escapes the "modern" idea of literature and art.' Serial Killers /The Heat Is On gathers Filipino artists who are at the forefront and cutting edge of conceptual art in Manila. Incoherence, or more precisely, arbitrariness, may be the underlying structure of this tight selection. And though confronted with an arbitrary sequence of demands, with no established parameters, working and living in a metropolis they know nothing, and know deeply about like the palm of their hands, and waking up to different issues they are either dimly aware of, or have been doggedly following up, this promises to be some off-guarded family reunion.

TAKSU invites you and friends to an exhibition of works by 12 Filipino artists entitled Serial Killers /The Heat Is On curated by Norberto Roldan for TAKSU Crossborder Project Opening reception on Thursday, 9 June 2011, 7:30 pm RSVP at taksu@taksu.com by 7th June 2011 Exhibition runs till 3rd July 2011 17 Jalan Pawang 54000 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia T +603 4251 4396 F +603 4251 4331 taksu@taksu.com Gallery Hours Monday to Saturday 10am – 6pm Closed on Sundays or by prior appointment only. For more information visit TAKSU's website: http://www.taksu.com/

TAKSU Crossborder Projects is a collaborative program between the gallery and independent curators/institutions and runs parallel TAKSU’s dynamic exhibition program representing established artists from across the globe. Crossborder Projects undertakes alternative modes of presentations and new ways of engagement within the existing context of the art market and general public. It aims to bring together emerging and mid-career artists who are at the forefront of a cutting-edge art movement in Southeast Asia and abroad. Crossborder Projects is not only about crossing geographical boundaries inasmuch as it is about cross-disciplines, cross-media and cross-practices in contemporary art. It seeks to present new ideas both in a mainstream setting and in non-commercial environments.

Future Shorts/ Manila

2011-04-29T13:32:00.000-07:00

Future Shorts /Manila

APRIL EDITION / FILIPINO PROGRAMME

APRIL 30, 2011 SCREENING: 8PM-11PM / BAR OPENS FROM 6PM-12 MIDNIGHT

SUGAL (GAMBLE) 2010 Directors: Marianne Magalona & Jan La’O

MIKE 2010 Director/Writer: Borgy Torre

THE CONFESSION 2010 Director/Writer: Paolo Lindaya

MANA (INHERITANCE) 2010 Director: Gabby Fernandez

TOPE 2010 Director: Christian AcuЦa

PAGHIGUGMA SA KADASIGON SANG KASANAG (LOVE AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT) 2010 Directors: Jo Macasa & Cindy Ballesteros

KONTRATA (CONTRACT) 2010 Directors: Paolo Correa, Pikol Dumancas & Rendric Planella

Brought to you by Future Shorts South East Asia and the Alexis Tioseco Internship Program for Cinema

Luggage Store Gallery + Green Papaya Art Projects: absolutely-NO-liability

2011-04-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

LUGGAGE STORE PROJECTION SERIES PRESENTS A SURVEY OF VIDEOS FROM MANILA, PHILIPPINES

absolutely-NO-liability: A survey of videos from Manila, Philippines co-presented by Luggage Store Gallery (San Francisco, CA) and Green Papaya Projects (Quezon City, Philippines)

Featuring Artists: Roxlee, Jon Red, Jun Sabayton, Kaloy Olavides, Vic Balanon & Ferdz Valencia, Kiri Dalena, Lyra Garcellano, Ling Quisumbing, Kawayan & Kidlat De Guia

absolutely-NO-liability will be projecting from dusk to dawn, April 1 - April 13, and can be seen from Market Street (at 6th)

For more information, click on the Luggage Store Gallery Website.

Shall We? : featuring current resident artist, Chin Patel

2011-03-25T06:37:00.000-07:00

Shall We? Chinmoyi Patel

SHOWING MARCH 30(wed), APRIL 1(fri) & 2(sat), 2011, BAR OPENS 7PM-11PM

Chinmoyi Patel’s new video “Shall We?” (2011), produced on residency at Green Papaya Art Projects, presents the artist playing dinner host to a party of four. While the guests freely talk, raise glasses and motion to pass food, the occasional passer-by and the signage surrounding disrupt this otherwise familiar scene. Set in a lifestyle store to a score of ambient muzak, Patel establishes a disjunction between the participant’s actions and their actuality. This private dinner party is public. There is no food, so if one wills, they must pretend.

Furthering Patel’s interest in “play” as a means to examine contemporary experience and situations, in “Shall We?” Patel utilises the artifice inherent in both the setting and the performances to subtly question contemporary social conventions. Meccas for ready-made “better living”, the lifestyle store is an anywhere non-place characterised by the international language of mass produced design. With “Shall We?” Patel invites us to question our role in the consumption of this global economy of “lifestyle”. (Susan Gibb, curator-in-residence at Green Papaya Art Projects)

Chinmoyi Patel (b. 1985, Baroda, India) is the current artist-in-residence at Green Papaya Art Projects. In 2009 she completed a Master of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has been included in numerous exhibitions in Europe and Asia including in Recontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid 2010, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010) and Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Rochelle School, London and Cornerhouse, Manchester (2009).

SHOWING MARCH 30, APRIL 1 & 2, 2011, BAR OPENS 7PM-11PM

+Pyramid with Maria Taniguchi and Bea Camacho

2011-03-25T06:34:00.001-07:00

+Pyramid Maria Taniguchi/Bea Camacho

SHOWING MARCH 30(wed), APRIL 1(fri) & 2(sat), 2011, BAR OPENS 7PM-11PM

Organizational systems may provoke interests or obsessions. Cultural or historical documentation can be a source of curiosity or intrigue. Our society is more keen on didactic representation yet, as individuals, we also recognize that each person’s perception of the world relies on his or her experience and memories. There is a paradox of the existence of documented objects much like Roland Barthes’ “Camera Lucida,” or Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work on the “Dioramas,” where through appropriate lighting, the recreation of an animal in a small part of its natural environment that usually includes some sort of narrative tension adds a bit of drama to the scene. We live in a society in which the private is consumed regularly in the public. The camera lens/ or the work of an artist reverses the course of things, as we are lead to the concept of “Photographic Ecstasy."

Maria Taniguchi’s video entitled, Infinity Island is a project that was an undertaking filmed in animal enclosures at the Manila Zoo. The video of animals filmed in their surrounding environment at the zoo act as a bubble of time and space, whose natural set become a potent source of appropriation. Bea Camacho’s project is based on the collection of comparative zoology at the Harvard Museum of Natural History where she focuses on the museum’s existing exhibits and explores the notions of display and representation. This work addresses issues of documentation, archiving and historical narrative.

+Pyramid is the sixth and last installment of The Ephemera of Disposable Goods, a program of Green Papaya resident curator Lian Ladia which aims to present a series of collaborations between two artists of similar or dissimilar genres investigating projects based on context of time/place, relational works or encounters.

Bea Camacho (b. 1983, Manila, Philippines) is a visual artist who received her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Studio Art with summa cum laude honors from Harvard University, where she was awarded the Albert Alcalay Prize for Outstanding work in Studio Art and the David McCord Prize for Achievement in the Arts. Her work has been shown in several institutions, including the National Museum of the Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Hong Kong Cultural Center, Kyoto Art Center, Triennale di Milano Design Museum and Tate Modern.

Maria Taniguchi (b.1981, Dumaguete, Philippines) received her BFA in Sculpture at the University of the Philippines, and she completed her MFA in Art Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2009. She has worked with painting, sculpture, and video around examining the relationship between abstraction and information. Her works have been shown at Primo Marella Milano, Next Wave Festival 2010 Melbourne, No Soul for Sale at Tate Modern, FormContent London, Lopez Museum Manila, Green Papaya Art Projects Manila, and Osage Gallery Shanghai. Taniguchi lives and works between London and Manila. Her solo show, “Echo Studies” is currently being exhibited at the University of the Philippines, Vargas Museum from March 30 until May 28, 2011.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This would not have been possible without the support of Susan Gibb, Chin Patel, Kiri Dalena and Marti Magsanoc. Thank you!

Video Projections from Vietnam

2011-03-07T00:23:00.001-08:00

Việt Nam Phở Sho

SINGLE CHANNEL VIDEO WORKS FROM VIETNAM

A TWIST OF THE PAST FOR THE PRESENT

MARCH 9-19

SCREENINGS FROM 7PM-11PM, WEDNESDAYS, FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS ONLY

South China Sea Pishkun 2009, 6:30min by Đỉnh Q Lê

Spring Comes Winter After 2009, 4:03min by Nguyễn Trinh Thi

Memories 2007, 5:22min by Nguyễn Như Huy

Uh.... 2007, 6:17min by The Propeller Group

Red Etude (Khúc Luyện Đỏ) 2009, 5:00min by Nguyễn Minh Phước

PLUS SPECIAL SCREENINGS

MARCH 19 (SATURDAY) ONLY, 7PM ONWARDS

Moving Forwards and Backwards 2009, 12:00min by Tran Luong

Spray It, Don’t Say It! 2006, 20:00min by The Propeller Group

IN COOPERATION WITH PILIPINAS STREET PLAN (PSP)

As with the rest of the Southeast Asian region, Vietnam has seen a spiked increase of video production in the past decade, courtesy of the wide introduction of cheap video technology, pirated DVDs and software, and easy access to the internet. The new material produced in this period explore new technical, thematic and conceptual territories, coupled with new ways of distribution, which provide an interesting contrast to a local educational system still falling short on contemporary art and video education.

Việt Nam Phở Sho is a sampler of this phenomena, in the form of a series of exhibitions and screenings that survey Vietnam's best video work from the past five years, as represented by some of the most interesting artists, spaces and initiatives working with the video medium. This project aspires to be an introduction that will hopefully spark the first of many collaborations between the Philippines and Vietnam.

Hanoi DOCLAB starts it off with video art and experimental documentaries culled from the material they produced since it's inception in 2009, as collected in a two-volume screening program. Ho Chi Minh City independent art space Sàn Art contributes A twist of the past for the present, five single-channel installations by four artists and one collective, on view at the UPFI Ishmael Bernal Gallery and Green Papaya Art Projects. In between are special screenings of select works at UPFI's videotheque and Green Papaya Art Projects.

A TWIST OF THE PAST FOR THE PRESENT

The contemporary cultural landscape of Vietnam is provocatively engaged in these five short videos presented by San Art. In these works, the residue of military control is nuanced in Red Etude by Nguyễn Minh Phước; the gradual demise of folk traditions is musically referred in Memories by Nguyễn Như Huy; the lament of lost knowledge and youth is repetitively in rewind with Nguyễn Trinh Thi; the irony of the Vietnam War and the symbols/narratives of survival is animated with Đỉnh Q Lê and the contentious usage of public space in Vietnam is graffitied with Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn and Phù Nam Thúc Hà. This body of work was first screened in London at TATE Modern in May 2010 as part of San Art's participation in No Soul For Sale 2.

South China Sea Pishkun by Dinh Q. Lê | 6:30 min | 2009

This video is Lê’s first animation, and it turns on the liberation of Saigon on April 30, 1975, which precipitated the infamous and chaotic evacuation of the remaining U.S. presence by helicopter. Hundreds of helicopters fled in panic out to the South China Sea in hopes of landing on U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. An unknown number of them crashed, or were pushed off over-burdened carriers into the sea. The helicopter, that ubiquitous wartime machine with its ominous trademark sound became practically synonymous with Vietnam because of its wide use – and widespread failure – during the conflict. Between 1962 and 1973 alone, almost five-thousand U.S. helicopters fatally crashed, with fully half of these due to mechanical failures.

In Lê’s meticulously clean, hyper-real animation, rough waters lie in wait to claim metal wreckage as helicopter after helicopter falls into the sea. The helicopters are without pilots; some hover, struggling desperately to maintain above the waters before finally giving in; some seem like lifeless masses thrown violently from a merciless sky, while still others dive into the waters with a suicidal mania. In a spectacular, never ending display, the U.S. war machine, once symbolizing American might and technical prowess, fails over and over and over again. (Hong-An Truong)

Dinh Q. Lê was born in Ha-Tien, Vietnam in 1968. He received his BA in Art studio at UC Santa Barbara in 1989 and his MFA in Photography and Related Media at The School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1992. In 1993, Lê returned to Vietnam and settled in Ho Chi Minh City. Much of Le’s art focuses on the history and experience of war, examining its affect on ideas of cultural memory and loss. His work has been exhibited world wide and is included in major public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In June 2010, his work ‘The Farmers and the Helicopters’ premiered at MoMA, New York. Dinh Q Le is co-founder of the Vietnam Foundation for the Arts and San Art.

Spring Comes Winter After by Nguyễn Trinh Thi | 4:03 min | 2009

In ‘Spring Comes Winter After’ 2009, Thi observes the funeral of Le Dat, a Vietnamese poet who was part of a 1950s literary and intellectual movement in Northern Việt Nam called ‘Nhan Van-Giai Pham (Humanism and Works of Beauty)’, which criticized life under communism. He was later banned from publishing for three decades, and it was not until 2007 that the Vietnamese government decided to grant him a prestigious national award in an effort to reconcile the grievances of the past. Nguyễn states ‘As the avant-garde artists like this poet were forced to be silent, Vietnamese art and literature suffered decades of decay’. In this short documentary film,the eye of her camera focuses on the grief of those in attendance of the funeral of this celebrated poet, many of whom are Việt Nam’s contemporary established writers and intellectuals, Thi’s camera however rolls time in reverse, the procession of people reverentially moving around Le Dat’s coffin depicted in rewind. This reversal of time could refer to Thi’s many interviews with Le Dat before he died where he once said that it was a common feeling among many of his generation that his youth was completely lost and wasted away. By reversing time in ‘Spring comes Winter after’, Thi wishes his youth to be returned to him. (Zoe Butt)

Thi Trinh Nguyễn (b. 1973, Hanoi, Vietnam) possesses a Bachelor of Arts in Russian and English, Hà Nội Foreign Studies College, Hà Nội; Masters, Professional Journalism, University of Iowa; and a Masters, Pacific International Affairs. She has produced 5 short films that have been screened in China, Italy, France; Cambodia, Việt Nam, Poland, Brazil and the US. Recent art exhibitions of her work include ‘10+’, Nha San Studio, Hà Nội, Vietnam, 2008; ‘Strategies from Within: An Exhibition of Vietnamese and Cambodian Contemporary Art Practices’, Ke Center for Contemporary Arts, Shanghai, China, 2008 and ‘In the course of our exchange’, Yunart Contemporary Art Gallery, Kunming, China, 2008. In 2007, Nguyễn founded ‘Hi-DEFF’, to encourage independent filmmaking in Vietnam and collaborations among artists, filmmakers and others that holds biweekly documentary and experimental film screenings in Hà Nội. Hi-DEFF was later incarnated as ‘Hanoi DOCLAB’, and now operates under the auspices of the Goethe Institut Hanoi. http://www.hanoidoclab.org/

Memories by Nguyễn Như Huy | 5:22 min | 2007

Across the diverse Asian continent, the struggle for its contemporary society to reconcile its traditions with the pace of modern life is an every day dilemma. In Vietnam, many artists attempt to engage this tug-o-war with the past. How to innovate tradition so that it's meaning and value is transferred to contemporary ways of living? For Huy, art is both a visual and a textual way of re-engaging a community's historical memory. In 'Memories', 4 people each play a different Vietnamese traditional instrument. They are performing 'Ca Tru', an ancient form of song in Vietnam. According to custom, each instrument performs like a character in a play, never 'singing' at the same time. However in Huy's version, each musician plays their own melody as if oblivious to the presence of others in the room, thus altering the form of this traditional composition. These 4 people are part of the same family, each struggling to maintain full-time work whilst continuing their studies of this national art form. Through this work, Huy asks how can the memories of our past and desire for a future coalesce in a present with equal voice?

Nguyễn Như Huy was born in 1971, in Hanoi. He lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City. Huy is one of the very few writers who has translated texts on contemporary art into Vietnamese. He is also a curator and a musician. In 2010, he founded Zerostation in Ho Chi Minh City, a studio space for exhibition and

residency creating opportunities for dialogue amongst young artists in this city. http://www.zerostation.vn/

Uh... by Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn and Phù Nam Thúc Hà / The Propeller Group | 6:17mins | 2007

The Propeller Group seeks to demonstrate how the culture of Vietnam is changing due to influences from other countries and the impact of the nation’s youth. Graffiti is used as a metaphor to show how the youth culture is trying to adapt to these transformations in Ho Chi Minh City. The word “Uh” is tagged on different walls and surfaces throughout the city. As people pass by on foot or on motorized bikes behind the painted graffiti, we realize that the “Uh” is set on top of the film rather than on the walls. It becomes clear that this is not an actual tag, but exists in an invented space created by the artists. This makes the viewer question whether the cultural and physical change occurring in Vietnam is also real or simply perceived.

The use of graffiti and English words exemplifies the loss of cultural identity and native traditions in Vietnam, especially in Ho Chi Minh City. Graffiti is spontaneous and uninvited, the antithesis of what the socialist Vietnamese government allowed. It is unscripted, loose, and in sharp contrast to the orderliness that was imposed on the Vietnamese. The inclusion of non-traditional elements such as graffiti illustrates how individuality is currently manifested in a country where personal expression was barred by the government. Looking at the

idiosyncratic interruption of graffiti, the viewer can extrapolate how individual personalities are impacting the visual and cultural landscape of the country.

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn and Phù Nam Thúc Hà founded The Propeller Group (TPG) in 2006 along with fellow artist Matt Lucero. TPG uses media production and popular culture through advertising, television, and cinema to publicize art projects. Their projects combine the ideas of “collapsing media strategies of power, distribution, and access to information as well as issues of public versus private space within the development of sub-cultures and popular cultures.” http://propeller-group.com/

Red Etude (Khúc Luyện Đỏ) by Nguyễn Minh Phước | 5 min | 2009

The human condition has been of central focus to much of Nguyễn Minh Phước's conceptual work, which embraces installation, sculpture and video. Compelled to make art that addresses the social gap between rich and poor, between social elite and social downtrodden, between those who are considered intellectuals, military men or humble laborers, much of Phước's work questions governance and control. Critical of the way in which his country's progress lacks an awareness of its own past, a kind of endemic attitude of complacency, 'Red Etude' 2009 draws on several cultural narratives of Vietnam. A woman, dressed in military uniform and waving a red flag, dances the forms of 'tai chi', a Chinese form of meditation that believes body movement moves inner spiritual energies. In the background, black and white footage of Hanoi weaves yet another story of this military clad, traditional dance. People are shown protesting, giving alms, staring blankly in desolation, moving busily with ambiguous purpose – all of these juxtapositions are deliberate visual ploys by Phước who asks us to think harder about the contemporary identity of Vietnam.

Nguyễn Minh Phước was born in 1973, in Hanoi where he continues to live and work. From 2003 - 2008, Phuoc started RYLLEGA, a contemporary experimental art space in Hanoi. RYLLEGA activities now operate on a project-by-project basis between Berlin and Hanoi.

(videos selected by Zoe Butt)

Zoe Butt is a curator and writer based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She is Co-Director of San Art, Vietnam’s most active independent art space and reading room. She is also currently Curatorial Manager of Post ViDai, the only private collection of contemporary Vietnamese art in the world. Previously she was Director, International Programs, Long March Project – a complex, multi-platform, international artist organization and ongoing art project based in Beijing, China. From 2001-2007 she was Assistant Curator, Contemporary Asian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia where she assisted in the development of the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT); key acquisitions for the Contemporary Asian art collection, and other associated gallery programs.

Sàn Art is an independent, artist-run exhibition space and reading room located in Ho Chi Minh City. Dedicated to the exchange and cultivation of contemporary art in Vietnam. We aim to support the country’s thriving artist community by creating opportunities that provide exhibition space, residency programs for young artists, lecture series and an exchange program that invites international artists/curators to organize or collaborate on exhibitions.

Dinh Q. Lê, Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Phù Nam Thúc Hà and Tiffany Chung founded San Art in October 2007. http://www.san-art.org/

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Moving Forwards and Backwards by Tran Luong | 2009 | 12 min

Artst and curator Tran Luong tries to address the Vietnamese in the context of regional experience and art. In 2006, he organised a group of Vietnamese artists to create projects in Phnom Penh, Chiangmai, Kunming, Rangoon. ‘Moving Forwards and Backwards’ was one of the projects realized during this period.For this performance in Phnom Penh, they brought toothbrushes to the crowded edge of the Tonle Sap. For more than four hours, the artists brushed their teeth and were joined by nearly 300 people. "We need to have more open and friendly about our memories. That can start from this interactive project."Phnom Penh-based curator Erin Gleeson notes that this 2006 visit to Cambodia was a formative experience for Cambodian artists in terms of expanding the horizons of what was possible in terms of medium.

Much of Luong’s projects, performances and interactive works try to bring art to public places. Luong: "in Vietnam, the long historical gap in education especially for art [has left] so little audience who can reach any kind of high art - it made me think about how to fill that gap."

Tran Luong was one the pioneers of new art in Vietnam through his role with the notorious Gang of Five in the 1990s. He is one of Vietnam’s most exciting artists and one of the few stepping forward to motivate and organize young contemporary artists. His support and dedication for new media art has increasingly led him to curate, besides continuing to work as an artist. In 1998 he was co-founder of Nha San Duc, Hanoi’s long standing and most important independent art space, and founder of the Hanoi Contemporary Art Centre in 2000, where he sat as director for two years. This short stop with the national structure came to an end in 2003, with Tran leaving his post in disgust over governmental corruption. His departure gave room for more freelance curating. http://www.nhasanstudio.org/

Spray It, Don't Say It! by Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn and Phù Nam Thúc Hà / The Propeller Group | 2006 | 20 minThis documentary explores the underground graffiti scene and the main characters that make up this first generation of graffiti artists in Ho Chi Minh City and comments on the battle currently taking place on urban walls in Vietnam—between socialist murals and posters (the only official public art) and fast-proliferating capitalist advertising.

The Propeller Group—comprised of Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Phù Nam Thúc Hà and Matt Lucero—initiate projects exploring collapsing media strategies of power, distribution, and access to information as well as issues of public vs. private space within the development of sub-cultures and popular cultures. http://propeller-group.com/

ALL MATERIALS COURTESY OF SAN ART AND THE ARTISTS

PRESENTED BY GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS AND SAN ART IN COOPERATION WITH UPFI FILM CENTER, DIA/PROJECTS AND VISUAL POND

Vietnamese Video Art + Roxlee, Surrogate Prey and Elemento

2011-02-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 8PM

ISHMAEL BERNAL GALLERY

UPFI FILM CENTER

A Twist of the Past for the Present : Vietnamese Video Now
curated by San Art with the assistance of Mervin Espina and Green Papaya Art Projects

Heat Studies :
Video installation/ Live Performance/ Film Soundtrack
feat. Roxlee, Surrogate Prey & Elemento

*FREE ADMISSION

ROXLEE

ROXLEE’s string of experimental short films from the 80s such as Spit/Optik,The Great Smoke, Lizard and Juan Gapang are simultaneously harrowing, funny,
bizarre and poignant. Compulsive wonder amidst extreme heat, his studies picture a Philippines society on the verge of a physical and psychic meltdown. His
imaginative frictions function like a bamboo laser beam - amassing and firing dirt, flicker and energy, as much as urban detritus, dead bodies, nocturnal apparitions and buffoon strategies – burning through matter and law like the great smoke.

SURROGATE PREY & ELEMENTO

Creating original soundtracks for Roxlee’s short films are two underground acts from the Philippines: the Doom/ Sludge Heavy Metal band SURROGATE PREY (Ralye Ibanez, Gani Simpliciano and Allan Diaz), whose slow and down-ridden heavy tone of music, countless shows in lesbian bars and series of drug-related arrests keep cult fans awake for their
upcoming release The Emptiness We Seek; and ELEMENTO, led by artist Lirio Salvador and an army of sound sculptures-cum-musical instruments (called ‘sandata’) crafted from metal pipes, stainless steel, bicycle parts and other industrial materials.

FEBRUARY 2011 Event Page :
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=182532605119358

University of the Philippines Film Institute
(Member, CILECT/International Association of Film and Television Schools)

For workshop inquiries:
Cine Adarna, Magsaysay and Osmeña Avenues, UP Diliman, Quezon City
E-mail: upfi_workshops@yahoo.com.ph>
Tel: 9818500 (UP Trunkline) local 4286, 4289; 9263640/9262722 (Telefax) ; 925-0286

Facebook account:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=190293333337
Twitter account:http://twitter.com/UPFilmInstitute
Multiply site: upfilminstitute.multiply.com

Website: http://www.upfilminstitute.net

HAUNT ME, RECITE IT AGAIN: Melissa Ramos

2011-01-31T22:32:00.000-08:00

HAUNT ME, RECITE IT AGAIN

MELISSA RAMOS / VIDEO INSTALLATION

FEBRUARY 4 (FRIDAY), 2011 6PM - 11PM

Current Green Papaya resident-artist Melissa Ramos’ research project in the Philippines manifested into a film montage based on “memory” and how the memory of people and past events haunt our lives and shape the space around us. Taking upon a journey of images, which she has composed, to link between semantic self-consciousness and visual experience. The film encourages the sensation of feeling and rejects the apparent need to constantly label as an attempt for a better understanding, to relate it to something rather unextraordinarily familiar as a means to try and control it. In overwhelming moments we turn often to sound when words seem to leave our feelings unjust.

Melissa Ramos is a filmmaker, photographer, performer and video artist. She is known mainly for complex multi-narratives that reveal the fragile inner life of her protagonists, as well as the tenuous line separating fantasy from reality. She sets up situations that are marked emotionally and sensitive in some specific way. Extracting representational systems that hierarchically shape our lives.

Kakistocracy: Lirio Salvador + England Hidalgo

2011-01-20T22:13:00.000-08:00

Kakistocracy: Lirio Salvador + England Hidalgo

January 21 – 28, 2011

January 28, 2011, Friday 6:00 pm

Reception and performances featuring ELEMENTO and THE WUDS

Green Papaya Art Projects

41b T. Gener st. (corner Kamuning)

Kakistocracy is literally defined as a society ruled by the worst form of citizens. The works of Lirio Salvador and England Hidalgo both cover a punk spectrum involved in a recognition towards the state of society as well as declaration which can either create apathy or provoke underground sensibilities. The combination of both artists will be received by a closing reception with performances by Elemento and old school 80’s punk band, The Wuds.

Lirio Salvador creates an assemblage of sculpture, sound and performance work in his practice. He creates instruments and arrangements by collecting discarded or recycled materials from his surrounding environment, such as bicycle parts, drain cleaning springs, exhaust pipes and stainless steel tubes. His works are drawn from the vernacular and molded into the form of modern industrial developments. Elements of his work reflect the contamination of genres and materials, his endemic culture, corruption/inspiration. He is a Fine Arts graduate in the Technological University of the Philippines. Salvador founded “Elemento”, a multi-dimensional group which specializes in sound art.

England Hidalgo uses materials such as a dry ballpoint pen, car keys, his fingers or any pointed tool to generate enough heat from the friction to produce marks, scribbles and images on thermal paper for his recent work. Fueled by old horror films, zombies, and gore, Hidalgo creates putrid images depicting his own critical view of social institutions using scrolls of thermal paper as representation of cause and effect in a social realm. Hidalgo studied a few semesters in Painting at the College of Architecture and Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, then moved to California in 1997. He got involved in the SF Bay Area Punk scene creating posters, flyers and album covers for underground record labels and played in San Francisco Punk bands Delubyo and Eskapo. He has currently returned to Manila to continue his studies in Painting at the University of the Philippines.

Kakistocracy is the fifth installment of The Ephemera of Disposable Goods, a program of Green Papaya Art Projects which aims to present a series of collaborations between two artists of similar or dissimilar genres investigating social sculptural projects based on context of time/place, relational works and encounters. Green Papaya’s space will become an open studio facility where artists and public can engage in discussions and debates as the artists go through their process of constructions and deconstructions every session.

MAIL ORDER BRIDES/ M.O.B + CARLOS VILLA!!!

2010-12-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

Run: December 10-16, 6pm-12midnight
Closing Reception: December 17, 6pm until bar supply lasts

M.O.B (Jenifer "Baby" Wofford, Eliza "Neneng" Barrios, Reanne "Immaculata" Estrada) and Carlos Villa offer the delights of CHATSILOG, a reflection on the desire to connect across the distance and time zones, a meditation on the shortcomings of digitally-dependent communication and the false sense of security it provides, and an effort at long-distance collaboration between 4 artists inhabiting 4 different places in the world, with the goal of producing a remote project in a 5th location.

CHATSILOG is a bittersweet, comedic attempt to cohere fragmented interactions into an illusory, temporary space that, for the duration of the project, the artists can share and jointly occupy.

M.O.B's participation in "The Ephemera of Disposable Goods series marks the group's first exhibition in Manila. For over a decade, Eliza Barrios, Reanne Estrada and Jenifer Wofford have worked collaboratively as Mail Order Brides/M.O.B., a trio of Filipina American artists engaged in an ongoing collaborative investigation of culture, race and gender.

Carlos Villa is an artist and professor at the San Francisco Art Institute. He is a beloved gem of San Francisco, nurturing a lot of artists, and founding & supporting alternative art spaces and platforms, and pushing the boundaries in art-making. Very recently, he just curated an exhibition entitled, "Rehistorizing Abstract Expressionism in the San Francisco Bay Area". In 1994 he brought the 3 member of M.O.B together for a research project, and things have never been the same since.

KIRI DALENA + CON CABRERA | The only risk is that of opennes

2010-11-29T05:31:00.000-08:00

THE ONLY RISK IS THAT OF OPENNESS

KIRI DALENA + CON CABRERA

November 25 – 30, 2010

STUDIO HOURS: 2pm – 6pm

November 30, 2010, Tuesday

CLOSING RECEPTION, 6pm – 10pm

Green Papaya Art Projects

41B T. Gener (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City

“The only risk is that of openness” is the third on-site project of "Ephemera of Disposable Goods" an ongoing project based on temporal collaborations at green papaya art projects . Kiri Dalena and Con Cabrera instigates a dialogue with concepts and materials used on public uprisings. Both artists isolate these concepts from the street and brings them indoors to investigate.

Kiri Dalena is a visual artist and a filmmaker, she is a graduate of the University of the Philippines Los Banos and studied 16 mm filmmaking at the Mowelfund Film Institute. She has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in the last few years. She was born and raised in Quezon City. Kiri is a recepient of the 2009 Ateneo Art awards.

Con Cabrera, born and raised in Sasmuan, Pampanga is a graduate of Advertising Arts in University of Santo Tomas. She currently lives in Quezon City while working for a magazine publishing company and teaching part-time in Kalayaan College. She's a member of the artist alliance Artists' ARREST (Artists Response to the Call for Social Change and Transformation) since 2005. For the past five years, she has participated in a number of group exhibitions in the Manila and co-curated an exhibit of digital works in San Francisco and Oakland, CA.

The Ephemera of Disposable Goods, program of current curator-in-resident Lian Ladia, aims to present a series of collaborations between two artists of similar or dissimilar genres investigating social sculptural projects based on context of time/place, relational works and encounters. Green Papaya’s space will become an open studio facility where artists and public can engage in discussions and debates as the artists go through their process of constructions and deconstructions every session.

DAY 3

DAY 1

FERDZ VALENCIA + VIC BALANON | The Crocogator

2010-08-06T07:54:00.000-07:00

THE CROCOGATOR
FERDZ VALENCIA + VIC BALANON

Ongoing every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, from 6pm to 12 midnight (bar hours), Ferdz Valencia and Vic Balanon create a spatio-temporal imprint called The Crocogator with paints, wood scraps and found objects.

AUGUST 14, SATURDAY 9PM
Closing reception with video screening, public intervention and more!

THE EPHEMERA OF DISPOSABLE GOODS

The Crogator is a first in a series of on-site project The Ephemera of Disposable Goods. From July to December 2010, Green Papaya Art Projects will observe the Philippines’ typhoon months with a series of collaborations between two artists of similar or dissimilar genres investigating social sculptural projects based on context of time/place, relational works and encounters.
The Ephemera of Disposable Goods, a program of current curator-in-resident Lian Ladia, aims to make available to featured artists Green Papaya’s space and bar hours (Wednesday-Friday-Saturday from 6pm to 12 midnight) as an open studio facility where artists and public can engage in discussions and debates as the artists go through their process of constructions and deconstructions every session. Remnants of the day’s work will remain on view at the shop window (when the space is closed)leading to a documentary installation at the end of each project.

About the artists and resident-curator
Ferdz Valencia designs and builds sculptures and installations out of wood, metal and found objects which are inspired by street and urban landscapes showing them to artspaces and galleries here and abroad. He also makes graphics for shirts, posters, zines, skateboards and skate shop walls. Recently he made artworks for a Japanese death metal label. He made an animated short film and has illustrated and self-published a 4-issue comic anthology. He currently lives in Quezon City with his wife and two adorable daughters.
Victor Balanon first studied Dental Medicine and left school choosing to pursue and develop his interest in art. A self-taught artist, he has worked as an illustrator for films, independent comics and underground punk labels. He later studied film and animation at the Mowelfund Film Institute. During this time he created a self-published comic-book anthology and started working on his serialized pen and ink drawings. Since then Vic has exhibited in several galleries both local and international. He currently lives and works in Quezon City with his wife and two kids.
Lian Ladia took Philosophy in DLSU Manila focusing on German Existentialism before studying Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. She co-founded the Filipino American art collective Kwatro-Kantos and organized shows in San Francisco, Oakland and Manila. She was a curatorial intern at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a cutting edge contemporary art space in San Francisco, CA, then became curatorial associate at Joyce Gordon Gallery. Currently she is the assistant art director at Galleria Duemila and resident curator at Green Papaya Art Projects.

REDTHEPLANEEET!!! THE SOUTHEAST ASIA TOUR 2010 AND COFFEEBREAK ISLAND | May 20

2010-05-18T00:35:00.000-07:00

PAPAYAPOST

WWW.GREENPAPAYAARTPROJECTS.ORG

REDTHEPLANEEET!!!

THE SOUTHEAST ASIA TOUR 2010

AND COFFEEBREAK ISLAND

May 20 (Thursday) Bar opens 7PM

Netherlands-based techno-punk trio Redtheplaneeet!!! makes Manila one of their pit stops in their Southeast Asia Tour 2010 which included gigs in Ruangrupa in Indonesia and in SiCKL in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. Redtheplaneeet!!! consists of DIY superheroes super Robber, roaming Rabecca and She-man putting highly danceable and noisy attack and-defense strategies to prepare you for your own missions. A blend of electronic & bended devices, samples, drums, bass, synth guitar and voice, giving birth to 'f-indie post-punk disco noise electronique'.

Coffeebreak Island, like your prodigal sons and brothers, does an unrepentant homecoming at Green Papaya with Hoy!/Gahaman/Big Trouble/Don't Fool Around/Pakikinggan/It's Gonna Be Alright/Let You Go/Sweet Lovin'/I Long For You/You'll Be Mine/I'm Down/She's So Fine/Party Song/Hoy Ulit! These originals do not promise at all that they will not melt the night into your not-so-ordinary clash of punk heavyweights from two far sides of the world but if they do what the hell are we here for anyway?

THE SLEEPYHEADS | Malnutrition of Love ALBUM LAUNCH

2010-03-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

THE SLEEPYHEADS: Malnutrition of Love
CD launch with 1solo 1 duo 1 trio 1 quartet 1 quintet March 10 (Wednesay) bar opens 6PM, gig starts at 9PM

The remaining second-chance takers thought it best to leave out the minimal details. Lest those faint-hearted creeps learn about their indiscretions. Not unlike any of the scenarios that they have meticulously re-staged, the events that soon took place confirmed their doubts, failure is not an option. Of course they have repeatedly thought about all possible consequences of withholding finality, to soon realize that closure will always be too impractical to take. After all, the first steps have been taken, the prescribed thresholds have been crossed, and no one ever said anything about Plan B. So, as calls of the wild rarely come outside deliriums, it was best to take this chance, if only to assuage any fears of not failing enough. But this is no trial-and-error, this is the real stuff less the preemptive fanfare and hype accompanying hiatus. To be tempted to suggest a fitting analogy between The Sleepyheads and their intermittent outings is a poignant cliche just waiting to be said. The same cliche befits second-albums -- it is always almost doomed for nitpicking. So come and join us, nitpick and dance to The Sleepyheads' Malnutrition of Love album launch tonight. Yes, you read that right, tonight.

NO to HANGOVER!

2009-12-07T00:45:00.000-08:00

NO TO HANGOVER!

Coffeebreak Island

Sleepyheads

Surrogate Prey

Terraformer

Vinty Lava

DECEMBER 12 (SATURDAY) BAR OPENS 6PM

No weekly horoscope can say for sure what changes we are ready for. Nor the tastiest baked fish in coconut milk, patiently cooked with love and mushy affection. Even then, the moving we have done the past years; the parties that have been thrown; the beer cases consumed; the wine glasses smashed; the manic talking sessions until dawn; the incessant flooding and unexpected holiday breaks could neither properly qualify as interruptions. Because usefulness always has an object, by definition, whereas uselessness has none. Where objects have haunted our daily, the subject will always be nitpicked for non/meaning. The slippery categories have overtaken the neatly packed boxes of artistic excess that may never find their way into actual realization, but is that even important? For the work has already been done, contingent and indisputable, the changes will take place with or without us.

Just to dispel any of those sexy rumors of closing shop, which has always been a constant threat to fools who stubbornly insist to persist anyway, another party is in order. Not to bid our beloved Kamuning space goodbye -- NO NOT YET! And no not to conclude a decade for if we are to be strict about it we have another full year to fill. No not to even bid the year goodbye. Yes, to give ourselves a big brotherly slap on our backs because despite all we have done good. Really, come on?! We did more than good.

For you beloved ones who've missed the jam-packed opening [http://goks.multiply.com/photos/album/727/] of Serial Killers(Two), and sometimes frustrated not knowing whether we are open or not, then come over this Saturday to get an even bigger fill and kick the lazy hangover habit to openly welcome that state of excess. Not to be mistaken for decadence but simple good old-fashioned Saturday night listening, dancing, seeing old friends, warm embrace and alcohol. As our last year hurrah before the in-between-holidays Garage Sale we are organizing (details to follow), we have invited house favorites Coffebreak Island, Sleepyheads, Surrogate Prey, Terraformer and Vinty Lava to dispel rumors of a Green Papaya Christmas Party which this is definitely not. Lastly, because child labor is illegal but permissible granted a work permit, we have asked our most favorite person to draw the picture you now see on this page, cheers to Joaquin Roldan. See you Saturday!

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS www.greenpapayaartprojects.org http://papayapost.blogspot.com

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone/Fax 7941628, 09189457387, 09266639626

email greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com

SERIAL KILLERS (2) December 5

2009-12-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

SERIAL KILLERS (TWO)

Opening 6pm December 5 (Saturday)

ROBERTO CHABET, DAVID MEDALLA, LANI MAESTRO, GASTON DAMAG, GINA OSTERLOH, CONRADO VELASCO, ENZO CAMACHO, YASON BANAL, RINGO BUNOAN, JAYSON OLIVERIA, MM YU, KALOY OLAVIDES, JUN SABAYTON, KRESKIN SUGAY, MAWEN ONG, POW MARTINEZ, COCOY LUMBAO, MARTHA ATIENZA, SHIREEN SENO, SAM KIYOUMARSI, JED ESCUETA, MARIJA VICENTE, GAIL VICENTE, LENA COBANGBANG, GARY-ROSS PASTRANA, LYRA GARCELLANO, PATRICIA EUSTAQUIO, PAUL MONDOK, MICO SANDEJAS, LARA DE LOS REYES

A hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. Incoherence, or more precisely, arbitrariness, is the underlying structure of this modest, yet grand mobilization. Confronted with an arbitrary sequence of demands, with no established parameters, working and living in a metropolis they know nothing, and know deeply about like the palm of their hands, and waking up to different issues they are either dimly aware of, or have been doggedly following up, this promises to be some chaotic family reunion.

Serial Killers is a response to parallel notions of seriality, non-seriality, or counter-seriality. Seriality as conceptual strategy, considered by most critics as a postmodern aesthetic, attempts to find resonance in the works of artists in their seemingly endless body of work, blurring randomness, and, or predetermination, in their repetitiousness. Repetition and seriality have been a recurrent mode of artistic production to some of the most prolific contemporary artists. Umberto Eco, famous scholar of semiotics, believes that, today, there is in operation a sense of aesthetic repitition involving a radical conception of seriality: one that ‘wholly escapes the “modern” idea of literature and art.’ (Serial Killers was first mounted in December of 2008.)

Exhibition will run until December 18, GALLERY HOURS: Thursday to Friday only 4-7PM, open by appointment call/text 09189457387

NEXT!

NO TO HANGOVER!

DECEMBER 12 (SATURDAY), BAR OPENS 6PM

WITH COFFEBREAK ISLAND, SLEEPYHEADS, TROJAN WHORES, LOC

SHORT CIRCUIT TACTICAL EXCHANGE: Miha Horvat

2009-11-27T18:09:00.000-08:00

PAPAYAPOST

WWW.GREENPAPAYAARTPROJECTS.ORG

HTTP://PAPAYAPOST.BLOGSPOT.COM

MIHA HORVAT ART TALK + DRINKS

5PM November 28 (Saturday)

Maybe we are fools to insist on the necessity of intercultural exchange, because differences are inherently there and a mere three-week stay in another creative milieu will never be enough. What is achieved is but a glimpse into the actual reality that one would like to penetrate. Still this is no reason not to be curious, or aimlessly wander around, or eat exotic fertilized duck egg, or forge relationships over bottles of bad-tasting beer, or criticize undercurrent motivations, or even finding silly arbitrary commonness. Slovenian artist-curator Miha Horvat has been in town for three weeks now, lurking and surfing, and taking down notes. To kick start, Philippines-Slovenia Tactical Exchange before kindred Lena Cobangbang heads off to an Eastern European winter, we are organizing another live art talk show on Saturday at Green Papaya to exchange notes, back room talk and even discontentments. Like any good excuse, this but another hefty gathering to give Miha that long overdue welcome drink.

Philippines Slovenia Tactical Exchange is a means to its own end: to activate and initiate intensive creative cultural interaction, critical exchange and networking activities between the two artistic communities. Meanwhile drawing attention to the dis/similar socio-historical and geopolitical contexts that shape contemporary practice in these two far away regions. Artist-curators Lena Cobangbang (Philippines) and Miha Horvat (Slovenia) have been respectively chosen to undergo creative research-residency in the said locales in view of sharing ‘best practice’ experiences, identify undercurrent motivations, initiate critical engagement, deepen networks of cooperation, read each other, and dream of utopic tactical artistic actions. Of course because we are all for sustainable cultural communities and long-term management strategies their residencies are meant to hit all birds with one stone, by default mapping out alternative cultural management strategies and methods. In effect putting into perspective how independently run initiatives have managed throughout the last years to influence local cultural production and politics.

sct.blogs.culture360.org/2009/10/09/a-means-to-its-end/

Philippines Slovenia Tactical Exchange is supported under the Asia Europe Independent Creative Art Spaces Follow-up Grant.

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone/Fax 7941628 or 09266639626

LARA DE LOS REYES | Graveyard of Half-Baked Ideas

2009-11-16T18:15:00.000-08:00

A GRAVEYARD OF HALF-BAKED IDEAS

LARA DE LOS REYES

opening 6:00 pm, November 7 (Saturday), exhibit runs until November 27

When the taxidermist finally managed to stitch the last bird back to its original form, he suddenly realized that it was not death that drove him to preserving ‘things as they are’ but the dreadful continuity of life that is even more frightening than the untimely trigger of a proverbial hunter left to scour the few prize pieces of natural history. For therein lies the uncertainty of the present and the infallibility of the future. Knowing full well that the obvious never corresponds to its actual appearance, precisely because the appearance has to betray the surface appraisal that it has previously proposed. Precisely because the obvious has to d/elude. Precisely because not doing so takes the fun out of the mind games that voyeur peeping toms want to play. And surely it is only because, in the one-to-one correspondence of form and substance brews a hollow core that is at once is and not nothing.

To admit that this show is simply about death is a cliche. And to think that a painting depicting traces of a volume that once stood as a fragment of memory is to mistake mourning for death. Continuity haunts more than death. And those spirits, presences, that continue to roam because they have left something undone are merely excuses for the seductive allure of indeterminacy. It is nothing but a strategy to delay melancholy. For “melancholy occurs when we finally get the desired object, but are disappointed with it (Zizek).” This object by its possession has ceased to become the object of desire–the cause of desire castrated, dismembered of pleasure–left dangling, limp and impotent. Hence there is some reason to believe that the shortest way towards desire is to bypass it, to delay its encounter and maintain its phantasmagoric outline. And hence, indulgence must be permitted for those foolish boys and girls who refuse to get married, for those gypsies who continue to travel, for those circus artists who continue to bike around the world, for those politicians who keep on running for office, for those armchair revolutionaries who prefer to wait, for the prodigal uncles searching the islands for gold, for the lover that keeps coming back, for fishermen coming home empty handed, and for those Octogenarians who decided to remarry.

To admit that this show is about capturing the motion of objects, or the life of objects–painted in their concealment–is about presence and a poignant mourning of life is a cliche. There is nothing as violent as preventing death, of disrupting completion, of withholding termination, of denying consumption, and of not letting what should happen, happen. This is the accident. Accidents are not sexy spontaneous combustions but masochistic painful intrusions that deceive and make us believe that they are welcome pauses in our easy-fix solution driven world. Baudillard comes to mind when he says: “We have to give objects, even objects of desire a chance to die violently. A vase, a chair, a book, a cupboard. Fire, breakage, disuse, oblivion. A chance to break inside your head and be smashed to smithereens.” Not ever to be mistaken as a cute little girl’s take on death, beautifully transforming it into another accessible painting, photograph, sculpture, object, experience or affect that will send every old man wild and wet in his pants. No and not ever. For Lara de los Reyes is not in the business of pretty things, she is in the business of death, but not death in its clinical fashionable goth package neither in its pornographic exotic squalor but in proposing death as a status quo. A Graveyard of Half-Baked Ideas proposes an even more violent vulgar death, death that is not necessarily closure but a suspension of completion like a cold sore that keeps coming back.

To remotely think that this is a comeback show after some period of hibernation is another cliche. The hermit does not live in isolation, s/he lurks among us silently, tacitly observing the folds of activity not to strike when we expect it, but to emerge in hyperactivity. Chain smoking coffee every morning in the familiar neighborhood cafe we have grown to ignore. Neither oblivious to every coming and going but in fact even more present than the rest of us. They are the village idiots, the homeless bums, the busy ones too busy to work, movie junkies, the dog trainers that have left town, the only ones who have time in their hands and in complete control of it. In fact they have always worked, combing what we have chosen to abandon, refiguring memorial objects and transforming them into the commodity fetishes that have us scrambling for every last piece if only to vicariously figure into that mythical spirituality we have all lost to global opiates.

Here de los Reyes paints nothing. Not the nothing that is empty. Not the absent. Not the hollow core that propels. Not the zen-like spiritually uplifting readymade. Not the understated waif-like aesthetic that the rich man junkie wants to rescue. Not the compelling emptiness of life in the neo-liberal economy nor the nothing that eludes life. But the fully-charged nothing, ever bold and full-bodied deceptive maximalist baroque! Nothing that does not merely compel nor dispel but specifically the nothing that denies us any gentrified completion giving us the motivation to deny melancholia.

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41-B T. GENER ST. (CORNER KAMUNING ROAD), QUEZON CITY

GALLERY HOURS 4-7PM WEDNESDAY TO FRIDAY ONLY OR BY APPOINTMENT 09189457387

BOOKLAUNCH kung BOOKLAUNCH

2009-09-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

Kantilaho ni Joseph de Luna Saguid (UST Publishing House)
Nouveau Bored by Marc Gaba (High Chair)
You Are Here by Mabi David (High Chair)
Libot ng Durungawan ni Allan Popa (High Chair)
Mga Tala sa Alaala ng Kagandahan ni Oliver Ortega (High Chair)

7PM September 4 (Friday)

Hosted by Vlad Gonzales and Chingbee Cruz
with guest performers Pocholo Goitia, Faelmar Ocampo and Joko Maymay

Thanks to CorAsia and Filipinas Heritage Library

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
Phone/Fax 7941628 or 0926 6635606 email greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

SHIGEAKI IWAI artist talk AUGUST 24, 4pm

2009-08-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

Shigeaki Iwai

Artist Talk: Family As Between Ordinary And Extraordinary

4PM August 29 (Saturday)

Shigeaki Iwai’s recent works deal with issues of communication and multicultural phenomena in cities and rural areas around the world. He often conducts long-term fieldwork research prior to an exhibition. For Dialogue, between 1996 and 1999 he filmed footage that records more than 60 languages spoken in multicultural cities in Europe and Asia. Iwai attempts to represent and reconstruct local communities or traditions in a contemporary way utilizing a range of media including sound, text, video and installation. His work has been exhibited in London, Rotterdam, Aarhus, Stuttgart, Milan, Toronto, Havana, Bangkok, Brisbane, Sydney,Singapore and in many cities in Japan. He has been involved in organizing a number of projects and educational workshops for people of all ages.

Family as between ordinary and extraordinary is a long term video project started in 2008 by Shigeaki Iwai. His research tries to seek what is the contemporary image of family by identifying details of family life in three countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand and The Philippines. After covering the two other countries last year, he is now working with nine families in the Philippines as the third phase in this project. His talk will focus on his conceptual framework and show some footages taken in Bangkok, Jakarta, Jogyakarta, Manila and Isabela.

Shigeaki Iwai lives and works in Tokyo. He has represented Japan in the AsiaPacific Triennale, Havana Biennale, and the Fukuoka and Yokohama Triennales.

For further information about his practice please visit http://iwaishigeaki.com/

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City

Phone/Fax 7941628 or 0926 6635606 email greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com

www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

ARGIE BANDOY / VICTOR BALANON | Gore Bore and the Gestapo Effect

2009-08-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

Gore Bore and the Gestapo Effect
ARGIE BANDOY / VICTOR BALANON

August 22 (Saturday) opening 6PM (Exhibition runs until September 19, 2009)
Gallery Hours: 2-6PM Wednesday to Friday, Saturday by appointment only

The easiest would have been to blame it on the same old adage, self-expression reckless behavior associated with their 'types.' Them who at once betray an intimidated bystander's first impression list by the sheer cruelty of their looks. Along with the company they keep. Who knows what other garish details do they keep hidden under the bathroom sink? An old military jacket perhaps? Inherited from distant grandfather, who turns out, is the long lost bastard son of an abusive priest somehow related to the famous WWII bandits who plundered the luxurious apartments of the Gestapo. The premise that things are out there because something terribly wrong holds true in this case. And this is why perhaps irreverent emotional detachment could only be the fitting solution to reverse the destructive effects of historical guilt and collective amnesia.

In Gore Bore and the Gestapo Effect, Victor Balanon and Argie Bandoy retrieve images from WWII to propose an irreverent historical dystopia "without any regard to any consideration." Not to be confused as knee-jerk reactionary rejoinder to the stale activism plaguing contemporary political history. But a sincere attempt at the best worst show of 2009 by way of a digressive commentary on an inaccessible fascist past. This admission to blunt incorrectness follows as they strip historical images, logos, words, and symbols of their evil past. And instead, cloak them with an obverse divinity ordinarily divested on national war heroes. Accompanied by rhythmic play of loaded words devoid of nothing else but their meaning–visual signatures that pertain to everything else but its essence.

Firing historical what ifs as though challenging the current disposition to political decorum. Take for instance the inferential triumph of the Axis powers over the Allied Forces, would it have been a world minus 9/11, US surplus goods, Iraq and Afghanistan war? Or the impending aspiration for a fascist regime to topple the spiritual fatalism of Philippine democracy. Propositions skewed and valid at the same time.While it is possible to comfortably dismiss such silly transgressions of historical reference, we cannot ignore the deliberate proposal to pit two moral differences against each other. In an almost fascist scheme. After all, "the difference between appearance and essence is internal to appearance, not essence."

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
Phone/Fax 7941628 or 0918 9457387 email greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

Teleology, Happy Ending

2009-08-05T00:43:00.000-07:00

Teleology, Happy Ending

A collaborative show by Enzo Camacho, Amy Lien and Michael Sanchez

Opening August 8, 6PM

Exhibition runs until August 20, 2009, Gallery Hours 2PM-6PM, Wednesday-Friday, Saturday by appointment only

Before arriving in Manila, I was already engaged in a long work of anticipation. I thought that mental and ethical calisthenics were the only way to ensure that I could make art here that would not, on the one hand, indulge in enthusiastic fascination or, on the other, retreat behind the hardening effects of culture shock.

I was writing aphorisms and slogans to myself which began as being about the possibility of work, but quickly became more about the possibility of writing slogans or aphorisms. As someone who has made art objects in the past but never thought of himself as an “artist” -- and, moreover, has been trained mostly as a reader of art history and philosophy – the possibility of falling into a predetermined position in my collaborative role was very much on my mind.

Amy landed in Manila a few days after me. The next morning, we flew to Boracay. By this point, I was increasingly dubious of my preparations, which seemed to be floating in the wrong register, inaccessible and irrelevant. But they were not so easily conjured away. Our first collaborative piece -- two paintings, one reading “Teleology” and the other “Happy Ending” – emerged suddenly, at sunset, without warning. (Michael Sanchez)

Enzo Camacho, Amy Lien and Michael Sanchez are artists currently based in Boston, Tucson and New York, respectively. They received their BAs from Harvard University and have shown individually in New York, Boston and Tucson. This is their first show in the Philippines.

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone 0918 9457387

greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com www.greenpapayaartprojects.org /

http://papayapost.blogspot.com

RAYA MARTIN | Some days are magical, and magically d sappear.

2009-07-22T02:15:00.000-07:00

Some days are magical, and magically d sappear.

INSTALLATION BY RAYA MARTIN

July 25 (Saturday), opening 6PM

Exhibition runs until July 31 only, Gallery Hours: 2-6PM Wednesday to Friday, Saturday by appointment only

Anyone's guess is probably as good as the next door neighbor's because as the current global financial pandemic has it: speculation spells the difference in a world gripped by skeptical optimism. Cynicism has somewhat taken on the same status symbol as the trendiest mobile gadget or social networking site. A mask we wear– badge that is proof of being contemporary. There is another catchy word, often misconstrued with layers and layers of association. The liter of enthusiasts or experts vying for the most sound opinion on the pages of dailies, fashion and society magazines. Is it not so tempting to ask then: "but who has the final say?" Probably a distinct mark of our psyche: eternally preoccupied with independence, emancipation and democracy yet needy of an authoritative 'other' to validate our claims. And since speculation is so 'in' these days, we could go on and link this with our overly Catholic upbringing. Magic playing the most important role in our lives, alongside the mystery of the Holy Trinity or of Jose Rizal, believed to be Adolf's bastard son. This constant mania for the divine and bureaucracy.

The reason why dreams of post-apocalyptic scenarios will never go away is inscribed in its very existence in our day-to-day. Flirting with our un/conscious, and sometimes admittedly, an excuse for the creative productivity that grows into some form of peculiar self-estrangement. As if you are always walking in a dream that never really wakes up. In his first solo coming-out exhibition of sort, Raya Martin's Some days are magical and magically d sappear sorts through his involuntary nightly visions recreating the scenario of what seemed to be a film set tucked away in the heart of Manila's crawly streets. A voyeur of the city himself, growing up in the southern suburbs, he attempts to recreate an experience that will most surely fail to capture its original moment of wonder. Literally tying up plastic straws into useless objects along with lost screenplay manuscripts. Then there is also that freak accident one summer in 1991. That is after all what magic is, it cannot be explained, its appearance is its essence.

ASEUM + EAR2EYE @ Green Papaya this week!

2009-07-20T01:37:00.000-07:00

ASEUM [ASIA-EUROPE NEW MEDIA ART SYMPOSIUM]

EAR2EYE [FESTIVAL FOR EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC AND RELATED VISUAL ART]

JULY 22 PROGRAM AT GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

This may in fact be the perfect opportunity to clear up any confusion. Yes, we finally bid Wednesday's I'm-n-love its most fitting goodbye with the appropriate party, dancing, drinking binge and all. Not to mention an ambush performance of our newly beloved favorite gang around. Yet, as some of us know goodbyes are overtures for new things to come. While we are still firming up Green Papaya's plans for the future we still have a string of love affairs up our sleeve until the end of the year. So don't fret. This week's lineup include: Asia Europe New Media Art Symposium (ASEUM) + Festival For Experimental Music and Related Visual Arts on July 22, from 7pm onwards and Raya Martin's coming-out solo exhibition Some days are magical and magically d sappear on July 25. Its not hard to imagine that despite the slew of ongoing creative action around the city, there's more happening in the interstice of our dear Metro Manila. There is after all this saying, "when it rains, it pours."

And pour it does as we host the third day of ASEUM with its panel of speakers on the topic of Open Source, the internet, Networked Cultures. To all of you still wondering what will exactly happen, you are most definitely not alone. We share both your curiosity and skepticism. So what proper way than join each other in our doubts. Better yet confirm or dispel them by actively participating in the open discussions. Afterwards, stay longer for live performances of invited artists including our house favorite Inconnu Ictu.

LIVE PERFORMERS

[ANODE VISION]

JON ROMERO VS ARVIE BARTOLOME

MITCH GARCIA

INCONNU ICTU

BRIAN O'REILLY-DARREN MOORE DUO

ETNIKTRONIKA

[VISUAL SILENCE]

TENGAL

AETHER9

[for additional info please go to http://aseum09.tk/ www.tengal.clangfu.com contact: sabawmediahub@gmail.com]

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Road), Quezon City

Phone/Fax 7941628 Mobile 0926 6635606

Email greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com

THE CLOSING PARTY! WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM

2009-06-22T05:04:00.001-07:00

THE CLOSING PARTY! WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM

June 24 / bar opens 6PM

Featuring JED ESCUETA’S Unknown A.D. with live performances by

The Beauty of Doubt / Granada / Todas / Republika de Lata / Pink Cow / Einstein Chakras

Sometimes, we never really realize that those feverish delirious bouts of spontaneity could ever reach their plateau. Perhaps the temptation to be divine and immortal are to blame. Or even the comfortable proximity of weekly debaucheries which keep us hopeful despite the throngs of the ordinary workforce, to whom we also belong, forcibly incorporated to compromise play in exchange of those seemingly safe Friday night outs. It is hard to imagine how we have managed to take over the reigns of Friday in exchange for our anarchic Wednesday-hump-day love affairs. And as far as love affairs (the same way little get away adventures) are concerned, we all know that they too eventually reach that unbearable lightness. Some get married and the others move on to other adventures.

What started out as spur of the moment let's do this out of boredom affair has grown into much loved and awaited weekly gathering. A million thanks to all of you: doers, talkers, voyeurs and hangers-on alike. Not to mention those newly initiated virgins who also made our sober nights interesting. It's almost hard to believe that it's over–but it is, we are approaching the end. Not with sorrow, regret, melancholia, sentimental cheesy songs nor relief but with a party! What else?!

So join us as we close Jed Escueta's Mama Don't Take My Kodachrome Away with his final project Unknown A.D., an arduous photo documentation of the all around Pinoy punk degenerate and underground scene accumulated over the years. And yes to bid Wednesdays-m-Love a final adieu. To all of you who have patiently followed it and to some of you who have never made it. Nevertheless, we will agree that the ride was indisputably a big one for the books. So we all better be there!!! Catch the live performances of The Beauty of Doubt, Granada, Todas, Republika de Lata, Pink Cow and Einstein Chakras. This is your last chance to make it. Never say die for tomorrow we drink!

The WOP Residency Progran is suported by Arts Network Asia. www.artsnetworkasia.org http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City

Phone/Fax 7941628 Mobile 0926 6635606

greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com

www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p JUNE 17 | Jed Escueta MEDIA BLITZ

2009-06-16T16:49:00.001-07:00

MAMA DON’T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
JED ESCUETA / Media Blitz
June 17 / bar opens 6pm

In the midst of the normal and the ordinary, the inevitable deviation is what matters. And it is inevitable-- we have all done something that becomes one for the books, where we pay homage to the rock star and his neon lights, sex, booze and rock and roll, shredding (not walking!) the edge, throttling life to a blinding height. But living fast and dying young is not so much the issue. What is being revealed is the individual's conviction to stray and to meander yet arrive at a resolution which poses as a seductive alternative to the norm. It is also a question of identity-- distilling oneself in a vast world surely makes use of some degree of rebellion, finding out what drives us, what makes us tick, how we innovate our victories, how we fall to our failures.

In Media Blitz, Jed Escueta revisits the roots of his practice through punk music and culture through a screening of a video documentary of the legendary punk band, The Germs. Is there only one way to be, one way to go about things? Whether music, religion or in this case, Escueta's practice, the existence of the possibility to deflect what is expected proves otherwise. So come and join us as we beat the midweek blues this Wednesday at Green Papaya for a movie and the usual chill out session to follow. See you there! (ZD)

The WOP Residency Program is supPorted by Arts Network Asia. www.artsnetworkasia.org http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com www.artsnetworkasia.org

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone/Fax 7941628
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

OPEN CALL FOR CREATIVE MUSICIAN TO BE PART OF PROJECT ANAKATIRA!

2009-06-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

OPEN CALL FOR CREATIVE MUSICIAN TO BE PART OF PROJECT ANAKATIRA!

The European based Explorer Dance Collective seeks a Cebu based professional musician to join the Anakatira! Project in Cebu. Dance artists Christina Jensen and Ylva Henrikson are leading a community based performance project with a group of young people in collaboration with Cebu City Task Force for Street Children. The production itself will last 5 weeks accumulating in a public performance by the participants. The project is funded by Hong Kong based environmentally friendly clothing company The Earth Collection.

We are looking for a creative individual who enjoys working collaboratively in a team, is interested in investigating how dance and music meet in the studio and in performance, but most importantly enjoys working with young people. The process will involve a lot of experimenting and will initially function as a workshop concerning movement, sound and rhythm. We are open to all styles or types of musicians/composers, for example even DJs could work for the process, what is important is an interest improvisational skills.

This is paid work and we are eager to find someone who is right for the project. Write to us explaining why you would like to get involved and what you can bring as an artist to the process. Please also include a biography about your past work/experience. If you have any links or websites we can look at that would also be great.

Please email the above requirements to:

Christina Jensen and Ylva Henrikson
anakatira@gmail.com

…and do not hesitate to contact us if you would like more information about the project or concerning our creative work!

w.o.p JUNE 3 | Jed Escueta SMELL HUSTLE

2009-06-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

JED ESCUETA / Smell Hustle / June 3 / bar opens 6pm

"What interests us are the circumstances." Perhaps the innate curiosity of the familiar that sustain our motion towards the dreadful leap of faith in the known. A deliberate suspension of disbelief in order to give second, or even a third, life to the ordinary. For example, waking up in the same side of the bed whilst noticing the subtle shift in the incessant barking of the dogs next door. Or the newly painted jeep you take every morning to work. Perhaps even the new brew that sits on your breakfast counter. At times, what matter are these little seeming divinities plucked out of the unconscious brought to life by nothing else than circumstances. A collaborative work between god and the devil. And when walking a foreign street, our elders have repeatedly reminded us to trust your instincts and follow the scent that leads you. Its hard to ignore the compelling truth in age-old wisdom of the pagan who pays his respect to every tree, mound and living creature that crosses its path.

As we immerse in Jed Escueta's varied concerns in the photographic practice, he further takes us in to the privacy of his intuit: a day he woke up to a storm, mother's plants, the pet dog taking a piss break. Seemingly banal events that probably contain some David Lynch-ian anomaly to it. In Smell Hustle, the third installment of his WOP residency, Escueta pronounces the invisible boundaries of a photograph. Capturing the danger zones that we don't normally notice. As always and now with the rainy days back there is more reason to chill out and be cozy this Wednesday. Also to catch is the artist's weekly intoxicating brew. Join us as we jump start a heavy week of activities at Green Papaya.

The WOP Residency Program is supported by Arts Network Asia www.artsnetworkasia.org

Heads up: June 5-6 (Friday and Saturday), watch out for the continuing series of Open Studio Sessions of Gangan Ensemble with visiting Malaysian experimental sound artists Yong Yandsen and Kok Siew-Wai.

w.o.p MAY 27 | JED ESCUETA + ANDREA TERAN'S Monthly Period Readings

2009-05-25T22:20:00.000-07:00

WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM, MAY 27 / BAR OPENS 6PM

JED ESCUETA’S FORGOTTEN NUTS TURN INTO TREES runs until May 30,
PIRATE SATELLITE of NU 107 spins for the evening

ANDREA TERAN’S MONTHLY PERIOD READING
features NICOLAS PICHAY and KHAVN DE LA CRUZ IN CONVERSATION

DAVID GRIGGS’ NEW YORK LONDON PARIS ROME MANILA CITY JAIL runs until May 30

Those ready to fill-in the blank notecards lying on top of the table have gathered enough dust to stand for years of memory accumulation. Along with the phone call missed, deadline that has passed, and unsent postcards. Perpetual motion covers up the little god-like details sitting in the feverish bed of habit and comfortable metaphors. Is there indeed no time to stop and smell the flowers? Or the freshly pressed morning coffee waiting in the kitchen? Like the mythical hunter occupied with capturing the horizon to take back home, time is a slippery animal to conquer yet also a nomad equally fascinated with predictable monotony. And its faithful followers determined to outrun it, only to be disappointed perhaps or mesmerized by the prey. Frozen, stuck in a moment but oblivious to its eventual end.

End is far from near but we hear it approaching as Jed Escueta approaches the second half of his residency his photo installation Forgotten Nuts Turn Into Trees is still up for those who have failed to catch it the previous week. And because we like quiet evenings that mutate into crazy evening gatherings, Pirate Satellite of NU 107 joins us to spin the evening away. If you thought that was all, there’s more! Andrea Teran’s Monthly Period Reading returns all dressed up, prim and proper. Then maybe not. Tomorrow catch filmmaker-maverick-indie-man-of-the-world artist Khavn de la Cruz and award winning playwright Nicolas Pichay in conversation with each other as they wrestle the world of narrative, drama, cinema or even each other. See you, see you its another Wednesday to be in love!

The Wednesdays Open Platform residency is supported by Arts Network Asia www.artsnetworkasia.org
David Griggs's residency and exhibition is supported by Asialink and The Australian Embassy in the Philippines

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone 0926 6635606
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p MAY 20| Jed Escueta FORGOTTEN NUTS TURN INTO TREES

2009-05-19T04:31:00.000-07:00

JED ESCUETA / Forgotten Nuts Turn into Trees

Wednesdays Open Platform / May 20 / Bar Opens 6PM

It's just as well that any law for memory has been repealed. Perhaps they just change, as most things are inclined to do, funneled through every individual pair of eyes.

In this case, it is with Forgotten Nuts Turn into Trees that photographs serve not only as the quintessential time capsules that they are, but also move into the peculiarities of a time bomb, wherein 3...2...1 what was once just a picture, explodes into something beyond a memento and lands in the light of shifting perspective. On the other end of it is the rediscovery of what was left behind during those few seconds when the flash bursts, resulting in an unapologetically simple picture... luminous in its rawness. In the looking back that occurs, each piece of suspended time and reality sprouts into new life, whether through introspection or conversation, throttling and permeating ones consciousness.

This Wednesday, Jed Escueta mounts his second exhibition as artist-in-residence. For another round of non-linear rumination, we invite all the usual suspects (and then some) to help kick off May's second WOP offering. So come! Buried somewhere in the night's speeding headlights and the slow burning cigarette is space to draw out the past and let it spark yet again. Let us maneuver through and around both retrospection and reconstruction, amidst the vibrating engines and tires that careen upon the little street most of us have all come to make our pit stop for the week. And if you haven't had a taste of Papaya, make this your first! We'll be waiting! (ZD)

The WOP Residency Progran is suported by Arts Network Asia www.artsnetworkasia.org http:// wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com

David Griggs’ New York London Paris Rome Manila City Jail runs until May 30, 2009

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone/Fax 632 7941628
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p MAY 13| Jed Escuta MAMA DON'T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY

2009-05-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

MAMA DON'T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY / JED ESCUETA
WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
BAR OPENS 2PM

If you missed last week's W.O.P comeback then wonder no longer. Yes, anticipation rocked and shook the house as avid followers, fans and hangers on braved the rains to join in some good 'ol dancing to jumpstart Jed Escueta's WOP residency Mama, Don't Take My Kodachrome Away. Time passes by quickly when you're having fun as Coffeebreak Island chased it away with two straight hours of non-stop moves and tunes. It was of course also an added pleasure to have on view years of collected photographs and snapshots. Meanwhile, David Griggs' opening last Friday was equally met by boisterous though slightly subdued crowd.

Surely, the string of last week's events have left most of us nursing the occasional hella' of a hangover so it is with a little prudence that we continue on with Fool Fool Around ongoing until May 16. This Wednesday we opt for the rather quiet but potentially potent chill out and hanging around so do drop by to catch the current exhibitions on view.

New York London Paris Rome Manila City Jail by David Griggs ongoing until May 30, 2009

MAY 6 DAVID GRIGGS | New York London Paris Rome Manila City Jail

2009-05-06T22:00:00.000-07:00

New York London Paris Rome Manila City Jail
DAVID GRIGGS

Opening 6PM, May 8 (Friday)
Presented in cooperation with Asialink and the Australian Embassy-Manila

David Griggs’ New York London Paris Rome Manila City Jail opens May 8, 2009 at Green Papaya Art Projects in Kamuning, Quezon City. His exhibition, capping his four months of residency in Manila, has for its centerpiece a suite of four large-scale canvases he worked with inmates of the Manila City Jail. Each canvas captures the coat of arms of Bahala-na Gang, Sigi-sigi, Sputnik, and Batang City Jail, all acknowledged unofficial fraternities of convicts serving their sentence for various crimes. These coat-of-arms painted inside the city’s cramped prison compound serve to mark territories, and of certain pride and dignity, these gangs hold behind the guarded walls. David Griggs was born in a Lockheed Hercules somewhere above the north coast of Australia in 1975. At the age of 18 he worked for an underground newspaper, photographing poverty in North India and Nepal. In 1996, while travelling in China, he had a near death experience and has since devoted his life to producing paintings that explore the darker sides of humanity. Griggs has exhibited extensively around Australia and Souhteast Asia. His first international solo exhibition The Buko Police was held at Green Papaya Art Projects in Manila in 2005. (AG/NSW catalogue 2007)

Griggs’ current residency in Manila is funded by Asialink and is officially hosted by Green Papaya Art Projects.

His exhibition will run until May 30, 2009. Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, from 2-6pm David Griggs is represented by Kaliman Gallery Sydney and Uplands Gallery Melbourne

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
Phone/Fax 7941628 or 0918 9457387
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

w.o.p MAY 6 | Jed Escueta MAMA DON'T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY

2009-05-04T01:44:00.000-07:00

MAMA DON’T TAKE MY KODACHROME AWAY
Jed Escueta / Fool Fool Around / May 6 / Bar Opens 7PM
WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM

Coffeebreak Island FREE ENTRANCE / 9PM

It is probably the dead-pan and yet hard-hitting raw quality of an insider's gesture that lend a photograph its near testimonial authenticity that keeps the viewer drawn–a gaze arrested into that single moment in time. Similarly akin to the useless yet priceless souvenir objects kept in this little tin box to be opened occasionally as proof of life and reality. What distinctly sets a photograph apart from all the others is not simply its capacity to overcome memory, imagination, and the faithful reconstruction of the past nor of the world but its ability to constitute reality in a past state, being at once the past and the real (R.Barthes). An experience that is dare say, religious and mythical. Easy (and hard) it may to consecrate an inimitable aura to the flood of images that confront us every Kbps, thanks to the proliferation of overnight photographers phenomena that litter the cyberspace, there remains a handful whose fascination for the mechanical, chemical and mythological process of photography. A fascination, infectious to disregard. And lurking among the few devotees is Jed Escueta who has instead meticulously taken to doing it the old-school way, sifting through films, negatives and silver-gelatin prints. In Mama Don't Take Away my Kodachrome, the last of Green Papaya's series of WOP Residency, Escueta lays out his specific concerns in the almost forgotten practice of photography. Playing the role of both an insider and outsider. One thinks of a lost alchemy.

Forgotten it is not, as he opens his two-month stint with what is a long overdue tribute to one of the best bands in the Philippines, Coffeebreak Island. Not only unearthing a collection of photographs gathered since 2003 but what best way to launch ceremonial things but with a night of nasty good 'ol dancing, beat and music. No summer has not yet passed, so island dwellers party with us. Don't be fooled just because the beach seems nowhere in sight of the unbearable metro doesn't mean we're no island fools. So come lets Fool fool around!

The WOP Residency Progran is suported by Arts Network Asia.
http:// wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com
www.artsnetworkasia.org

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
Phone 0926 6635606
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com
info@greenpapayaartprojects.org
www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

APRIL 24 & 25 The Lovegangsters | PROMISES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN

2009-04-21T05:34:00.000-07:00

PROMISES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN PERFORMANCE / ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION Mia Cabalfin Lena Cobangbang Diego Maranan Donna Miranda Angelo Suarez Roman Cruz 9 pm April 24-25 (Friday-Saturday), Green Papaya Art Projects We become humans when we get caught into a cloud, self-propelling loop of repeating the same gesture and finding satisfaction in it. - Slavoj Zizek, Parallax View The snobbish tone of a roundtable discussion belies the possibility of taking something much seriously than how it already appears to be because surely there is nothing as tedious than witnessing steadfast attempts of repeating patterns to the point of their own exhaustion. Useless almost, yet still inexplicably appealing. It must be the near impossibility of a mindful act that compels the viewer to take an even closer look with full attention, eyes caught in each minute shift of details and little transparent surprises embedded in the ordinary. Unlike the action-packed jab of live performances, this recent taking takes a rather different tenor. Gripped by simplicity but bound by complexity. Often times, research oriented collaborative endeavors are expectedly frowned upon for its indulgent if not hardly accessible material. Tempting it may to say that every conceptual cliche must have been overused or repeatedly referenced, what else is there left to do but find pleasure in the accumulation of historical snippets? Or the instant gratification of entertainment afternoon specials? Or the nostalgia of retro and cool? Perhaps it is plain stubbornness to insist on the promise of promises. As well as hope in a twisted idealized sense of utopia. Just as we thought we knew which way to go, The Lovegangsters again takes the necessary detour towards speculating on the productive conditions of a performance in Promises are Made to Be Broken. Prioritizing the communicative slant of performance and negotiating an open space for dialogue, interactivity and collaboration. Not because critical reflexivity is the new black, which is another overly used concept by now, but because the new black is the new black. Will they succeed or fail? Only you can decide of course. So while, this may not sound as your typical performance party allow us to prove you otherwise. Only if you promise to suspend bias and knee-jerk reactions towards the ordinary. Lastly, because life is a positively charged flux and unpredictability we have gathered a rather unorthodox mix of conspirators for this love crime with Mia Cabalfin, Lena Cobangbang, Diego Maranan, Donna Miranda, Angelo Suarez and Roman Cruz. Promises Are Made to Be Broken runs, April 24 and 25, 9PM at Green Papaya Art Projects. Admission is free. It is supported by the National Commission on Culture and Arts. Green Papaya Art Projects is located at 41B t. Gener St. cor. Kamuning Road, Quezon City For inquiries: call 7941628 or 0926 6635606 email thelovegangsters@gmail.com url: http://thelovegangsters.blogspot.com

w.o.p APRIL 22 | Martha Atienza MAN IN SUIT Artist Talk

2009-04-21T03:46:00.000-07:00

WHEN ROUTINE IS ALL THERE IS
WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
Martha Atienza ARTIST-TALK, 8PM, APRIL 22
BAR OPENS 7PM

Surely as the rains gently counter the yearly hellish summer heat there is no escape from the occasional nostalgia finding its way in the newly wet and slippery pavements. Little mud puddles that seem like pools of reflection of a thirsty city. Creeping like a vein meanwhile marking the passage of time, a season to another. Even routine eventually loops it's way out into a new cycle of repetition, that is probably what they make out of the inevitable. And despite the lack of any clear seasonal change here in the islands, we almost always somehow look the sublime in the eye and overtake its slippery grip.

If you think you missed it, think again because here is your chance to catch Martha Atienza's exhibit/installation Man In Suit before she heads off and caps her six-month long stay in the tropics. As all appropriate closing ceremonies, this one will not pass by without the ceremonial artist-talk. This Wednesday, Martha tackles the poetics and malleability of this touring work as it makes it's last Manila round. So, better catch this, lest you miss out on the opportunity of intimate creative interaction.

Man in Suit APRIL 1 | MARTHA ATIENZA

2009-03-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

Man in Suit MARTHA ATIENZA
Opening 6PM, April 1 (Wednesday) EXHIBITION RUNS UNTIL APRIL 22, 2009

Hardly noticeable are the minute details disguised in the hysteria of the ordinary. Anomalies that easily pass off for their sheer congruity with the world, seemingly in complete agreement with the necessary order of 'how things should be.' In fact the routine second look-subtextual reading no longer holds true. For what are all those manuals on looking for, if not to raise a generation of spectators generally preoccupied with that which is hidden in a picture. Is it not almost tempting to say that nobody trusts anybody these days? Because appearances are constantly interrogated if not meticulously pried upon if only to squeeze out every signification there is. Perhaps, Martha Atienza's Man In Suit might as well be an exercise in weighing appearances and silent test of the malleability of 'things as they are.'

What could be a more fitting analogy than a peasant dressed in such clothing reminiscent of excess and formality to perform the most utilitarian and laborious of tasks such as baking bread or feeding chickens? And what of the beauty-queen-in-disguise vying for a spot among thirteen revered statues of the apostles and Christ? As the outsider attempts to bridge the obvious gap of difference what transpires is an even more amplified gap of anomaly from itself. Then the mundane becomes even more unbearably ordinary, where we are asked to not look for more meaning but to accept meaning that stares right back at us because "things do not simply appear, they appear to appear." Marking the midway phase of her residency, Martha Atienza opens her video-installation Man In Suite this Wednesday coupled with the laborious pickings of last months spent in an island you know where. So before you even think of retreating into that well-known dead days of Lent, come over and be equally faced with the similar introspection not into the unknown but into that place that we have always known.

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS 41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
Phone/Fax 7941628 Mobile 0926 6635606
greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com www.greenpapayaartprojects.org

GALLERY HOURS: WED-SAT 2-6 PM / SHOW WINDOW HOURS: FRI-SAT 6PM-MIDNIGHT

HANNOVER KICK! Beneath Polka-dotted Skies Manila Kick-off Performance APRIL 3

2009-03-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

HANNOVER KICK!
Beneath Polka-dotted Skies Manila Kick-off Performance

Choreography DONNA MIRANDA / Dancer MARAH ARCILLA / Sound POW MARTINEZ
with Blums Borres and The Lovegangsters

APRIL 3 (FRIDAY), 9PM, GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

It seems then that this piece of information is something we can no longer hold back. Despite the precarious situation and financial crisis gripping the rest of the world, there are the persistent ones who would simply rather plunge into the treacherous edge of uncertainty and sensuous unknown. Because this is what the mad savage children have been raised to do. Oblivious to constant reality-checks and imminent pragmatism. After much thought weighing gains and losses, we have finally made up our minds and push through we shall. What difference will another love crime be after all? Anyway, this one is long overdue of a proper showing at the home front. So it is with much pleasure that we invite you to the kick-off fund raising performance of Beneath Polka-dotted Skies before it moves over to Hannover, Germany for the 23rd International Competition for Choreographers Hanover on April 3, Friday at Green Papaya Art Projects.

Beneath Polka-dotted Skies, choreographed by Donna Miranda, won the Jury Prize Award at the 2007 Yokohama Dance Collection-R Solo X Duo Competition in Yokohama, Japan in 2007. It has been invited to the Live Arts Bangkok Festival (Thailand, 2007), WiFi Body Festival (Philippines, 2007) and FreeDance International Festival (Ukraine, 2008). And while it's been said over and over that old dogs can't learn new tricks, no one said anything about unlearning old ones. Surely, nothing sounds more enticing than a virgin going through that first baby step. So is Marah Arcilla who will be performing the piece in Germany as her coming-out party of sorts. Also performing for the evening are Blums Borres and The Lovegangsters, lending the conspiratorial air that makes everything smell so warm and cuddly.

Now on its 23rd year, the International Competition for Choreographers Hanover maintains a prominent position in the German and international dance scene. Every year, it receives approximately 160 entries from 45 countries, attended by international top class jury. It has since recieved worldwide critical appeal. The competition provides a platform for new young choreographers to present their work on the world's stage to present to a renowned expert jury and experience the advantages of professional stage technology, not to mention the opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues and the audience.

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41B T. Gener St. (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City
tel +632 7941628 email thelovegangsters@gmail.com
http://thelovegangsters.blogspot.com

MAR 13 Kurt Gloria | EXCEPT EXPECT @ Green Papaya

2009-03-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

EXCEPT EXPECT KURT GLORIA
Opening 6PM March 13 (Friday)

Exhibition runs until march 25, 2009, Gallery Hours: 2-6PM Wednesday-Saturday

w.o.p MAR11 Martha Atienza | WHEN ROUTINE IS ALL THERE IS + video conversation with GERRY TAN

2009-03-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

WHEN ROUTINE IS ALL THERE IS | WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM

MARCH 11 BAR OPENS 7PM

Those tedious afternoon walks around the street corner and habitual dips in the pool seem like nothing but constructive distractions from the compelling need to work. Still somewhat comforting that ‘work’ nowadays could easily mimic ‘play’ while placed under watchful and suspicious eyes of the neighbors. But how much waiting does it take for a picture to reveal itself? And how much watching does it entail to notice the anomalies undisguised in its very appearance?

Last week’s intimate but hefty evening menu of screenings perhaps rekindled the neglected intuition of ‘watching’ with Martha Atienza’s presentation of her previous works and Conrado Velasco’s current electronic fixations. A evening of yin and yang, clichés aside. But definitely no cliche was interaction among students, enthusiasts and artists themselves that have sparked new connections. This Wednesday we move on with Martha’s w.o.p residency as she screens the things that she has been working on the past months in the island. To be complemented with video conversation of sorts with Gerry Tan’s own video pickings: Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) by Swiss Duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss; Sunrise and Sunset; and his own video work Aparition. Never mind the crippling heat and that its too early in the week to party for things such as these may only come far and between.

WOP IS SUPPORTED BY ARTS NETWORK ASIA (ANA)

w.o.p MAR 4| Martha Atienza WHEN ROUTINE.... + Conrado Velasco SYNTHETIC HAIKUS

2009-03-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

WHEN ROUTINE IS ALL THERE IS
Martha Atienza WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM 8PM

SYNTHETIC HAIKUS
Conrado Velasco ELECTRONIC PROJECTIONS AND ARTIST TALK 9PM

March 4, Bar Opens 7PM

And because we are never satisfied with the motley array of encounters intersecting at Green Papaya, there shall always be more to come. But first things first, a million shout out of thanks to kindred companions who made last week's gathering a blast! Yes, we drank, ate, talked, talked more and listened. MAM's field trip was another worthwhile sound gig minus the jeering "what the he$%# is all this about?" as the house attentively enthralled at the aural and visual hallucinations. Still Art Networks Asia's Manila Interphase meeting/reception brought out never before seen hardcore networking skills among the independent art community.

Though this Wednesday does not promise to be as big a party as the last one was, it is surely as hefty and hearty. It could or might as well be called a night of emigrants but we don't like falling for overly simplistic instant noodle categorical givens. Geo-political boundaries are not only porous but sometimes deceiving too. While we have seen her lurking around for a while, a proper coming-out party of sorts is necessary for Martha Atienza as she begins her W.O.P residency with When Routine is All There Is with an artist talk and presentation. Following her is Conrado Velasco who shall talk us through his latest electronic fixations. If you missed his artist talk last Saturday at Slab this is your chance to make up.

Martha Atienza was born in Manila. She graduated her BA in mixed media and media arts at AKI Academy of Visual Arts and Design, The Netherlands, and took a five-month exchange program at the Time and Space Department of Kuvataideakatemia, Helsinki, Finland. Prior to that, she studied Economics at the De La Salle University in Manila. Since finishing college, she has been working and living in Rotterdam, Manila and Bantayan Island in Cebu. She has also been exhibiting her works in Amsterdam, Helsinki and Manila.

Conrado Velasco was born in Manila and is a graduate of the University of the Philippines - Diliman. His work inhabits the spaces where art, design, commerce and technology intersect. Velasco’s career runs the whole range of disciplines - graphic design, photography, sculpture, industrial design, visual merchandising, illustration, motion graphics and electronic arts. For him the future of art lies in the volatile mix of technology and ideas. A former art director/photographer at GAP and Banana Republic, Velasco developed and designed the logo of Green Papaya Art Projects.

w.o.p FEB 25| Mark Salvatus CONNECTING URBAN SPACES + much much more

2009-02-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

CONNECTING URBAN SPACES / WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM
ARTS NETWORK ASIA (ANA) INTERPHASE
MEDIA ARTS MANILA (MAM) FIELD TRIP

FEBRUARY 25, BAR OPENS 7PM, ANA RECEPTION AT 8PM

Surely it has been said many times over that nothing lasts forever. No matter how strongly we delay such encounter, it is also at the same time inevitable. But endings are nothing but mere temporal constraints, fluid at the same time malleable. The means to transgress the boundaries will persist but not to be approached without caution. Mark Salvatus caps off his two month W.O.P residency, delivering a state-of-the-metro sorts for his last presentation. And because we like things to be auspiciously arranged according to the arbitrary arrangement of planetary constellation, be prepared for a hearty evening of talks, presentations, food, booze and sound as Arts Network Asia (ANA) throws a little reception for the evening. Lastly, Media Arts Manila (MAM) pays us a little visit with an excursion of field recordings and soundscapes of corporeal and imagined environments. So do pay us a visit, there is much in store for everyone in the family.

ARTS NETWORK ASIA Manila Interphase | February 25

2009-02-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

MAM Field Trip @ Green Papaya

2009-02-22T18:58:00.000-08:00

FIELD TRIP field recordings and soundscapes of corporeal and imagined environments February 25 (Wed) 9PM FREE ADMISSION The M.A.M. tour bus stops over at the Green Papaya Art Projects and ushers us through an acoustic safari of feral atmospheric fauna. Featured artists present their original phonographs, creating immersive environments through the manipulation and playback of captured ambient sounds. autoceremony, Blend:er, Grnd Ctrl, Mark Laccay, Mannet Villariba serves us their own brand of improvised acoustic ecology. Improvised video by Edsel Abesames and Tad Ermitaño.
Presented by Media Arts Manila (http://mediaartsmanila.blogspot.com/) in cooperation with Green Papaya Art Projects, supported by Globe.

Green Papaya Art Projects
41B T. Gener St. (corner Kamuning Road),
Quezon City
Phone 0926 6635606 0918 9457387

Edsel Abesames is a video editor / motion graphics person / director / racketeer / guitarist / poser / anime fan /overweight 32 year old / discontent drunkard. autoceremony a.k.a. Jing Garcia sound artist and award winning music producer. He established the Children of Cathode Ray backed in 1989, one of the early experimental and sound art groups in the country. Produced several music albums for different alternative music artists in the 90s. He is currently the tech editor for The Manila Times and Speed Magazine. He also hosts a tech segment on the late evening news on

TV5 BLEND:ER a.k.a. Cris Garcimo is an electronic music creator and a noise enthusiast who lives in Cavite, Philippines. He started experimenting with audio acrobatics and technoid sonic landscapes in 1999. Being included in various album anthologies like Mood Swing Theater Volume 1 (2004) released by Kittenwhip Compilation and S.A.B.A.W. Anthology of Noise, Electronic, and Experimental Music (2004), Blend:er has often collaborated with E.X.I.S.T., SABAW and Electronica Manila artists.

Tad Ermitaño is a media artist, writer and filmmaker. As far as the media art goes, he is interested in algorithmic/procedural editing and composition, new uses for the moving image and have been lately drifting into elementary robotics. His work "Quartet" was exhibited in the recently concluded International Symposium for Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Singapore.

Grnd Ctrl a.k.a Christian Martelino Concepcion, a manila based art director, experimental musician, DJ and event organizer. His breed of work roots from his propensity in the field of music and design. It is his passion for avant-garde films, art, fashion, experimental music and bizarre imagery that led him to create audible pieces as well as to do graphic design work. It wasn't until implementing his studies of traditional fine arts and his enthusiasm with avant-garde music that began his realization of his ideas, philosophies and visions by combining dissected sound textures with rhythm, to create soundscapes that pierce images inside our minds. His currently an active band member for the ambient/experimental/industrial band "The Slave Drum", busy with his own electro industrial act "Decay Transit" and does solo performances as "Grnd Ctrl". Uses both traditional and non-traditional sound sources with using samplers, synthesizers, transducers, effects and anything he can get his hands on. Has participated in several events from various production outfits and his group called "Circa1849".

Mark Laccay is an award winning Audio Engineer who is the CEO of Sonic Logo Multimedia Inc. and a managing partner of Sweetspot Studios. He has worked as a Sound Designer for various films and is the main audio consultant for the "Dr. Jose Maceda Collection Digitization" Project. As an educator he taught audio classes at DLSU-CSB. He recently returned from the Austrian Academy of Sciences where he acquired a certificate of Audio Tape Restoration and Digital Audio Archiving.

Mannet Villariba is a performance artist, painter, sound artist, visual programmer and designer. He has been active in diverse fields of art and design - including research and development. Yielding the outputs of sounds, images, and light through analyzing and transforming the numerical values gained from various sensors and input devices, he is a visual artist pursuing sensual peculiarity and interaction.

FEB 11 MAWEN ONG | The Light at the End of the Tunnel Has Been Switched Off

2009-02-05T05:05:00.000-08:00

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL HAS BEEN SWITCHED OFF

installation by MAWEN ONG curated by ROBERTO CHABET

Opening February 11, 6PM, exhibition until March 7, 2009

Gallery Hours 2PM-6PM, Wednesday-Saturday

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL HAS BEEN SWITCHED OFF

by Lena Cobangbang

There is said to be truth in illumination. But the fluorescent glow that shines upon objects that are supposed to illuminate one’s pondering about the sublime (through art ) often bear instead a greenish-bluish cast of sterile indifference like corpses in a morgue, or rather like expiring fruits in a grocer’s bin. When this happens, the commonplace things occupy rather one’s wonderment. Thus, banality is lent with that pall of associative dreaming deftly enabled by the frame, the cropping of a document, the snapshot, the very portable ready-mades of a highly consumerist and spectator-partisan culture.

This is no truer than Mawen Ong’s 28 lightboxes of light switches and electrical sockets found in the various art spaces, galleries, and museums in Manila and abroad that she’s visited – all looking nondescript as from a hardware catalogue, some crudely taped and painted over to feebly camouflage itself as part of the pristineness of the wall where an artwork should be the main attraction.

Ong’s penchant for the common things that are uncommonly taken interest by most such as trash cans, blank billboards, and shrouded infrastructure belie the weariness and boredom of a forced touristic enchantment. These things that are supposed to be hidden or taken out of the picture or thought to otherwise rob the picturesqueness of the scene are instead brought to focus as a coercive conspiracy to look at microscopically these things that pervade the same space of supposed attractions.

It is as though Ong’s pictured switches are the mechanisms to such withdrawal from the cacophony of these manufactured and mediated images.

Yet the means itself – digitally printed photographs of switches and plugs encased in light boxes, plugged into actual sockets, running on the gallery’s electrical power supply – short circuits on its own by its tautological ontology.

Tautology had been one of the philosophical schemes of conceptual art. It is a mirror reflecting what’s there in actual space, presenting “plain reality” verbatim, with nothing more or less to it, as said to be of Anastasi’s plaster cast of an electrical outlet, or that of Derek Jarman’s neon sign spelling light, or even that of Kosuth’s neon light spelling neon – all self-defining, self-terminating propositions but not entirely humorless in being gag props to all the seriousness of theory. These are the language games that smart but bored people play, yet not hard to understand or follow. However, as these accumulate they become a lexicon of indices, replacing actual objects as signifiers within the context of art especially. They thus become “formal doubles” as termed by Peter Halley in his essay Essence and Model to objects being duplicated themselves and thus “duplicating their art-effect”[1].

However, if the very essence of conceptual art as ‘idea art’ is postulated on the image (or any representation) of a lit bulb, what then of a switch or a three-pronged electrical socket? Does this foreground the arbitrariness of choosing when and what to see which is art or not art? Is it the same arbitrariness for which Duchamp’s use of readymades was based on as a “reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste ....... a complete anesthesia”? Or is this is an arbitrariness of ordering objects to supersede art and to consequently produce an art that can only signify artness? Or is this simply an electric impulse that surges through the spine and into the brain?

Presented here are snapshots, almost flat, clear readymades. The snapshot can be anything else, or can be everything else. Yet these choices can smother one into unquestioning acceptance whatever is within the frame, or lit and spotlighted in the space of spectatorship.

If it did and does so, the light is however not an illuminating one, but rather masks that light into an opaque monochrome, a dark mirror, a return to zero.

The light seen at the end of the tunnel after the switch has been turned off is but the after image of that glow.

[1] This pun to ‘artefact’ is probably intended by Halley as to imply as well the increasing uselessness of these objects as they correspondingly function more as mere signifiers, e.g. archeological finds such as clay vessels are lock-stocked instead in natural history museums for scholarly study of a certain civilization’s culture rather than regaining their original use.

w.o.p FEB 4 | Mark Salvatus URBAN PLAN

2009-02-02T19:17:00.000-08:00

URBAN PLAN WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM February 4

When the notorious writing on the wall "No to work" appeared on the streets of Paris in the 60s little did we think that in the 21st century thousands of people would loose their jobs everyday. As of yesterday close to 11,000 overseas migrant workers were laid off in Macau. Meanwhile, the Department of Labor predicts that 800,000 workers in export-oriented industries such as electronic are at risk of losing their livelihood because of the global financial crises. The easy speak of crisis versus opportunities won't be so easy to grasp. The little obscure group of situationists in France must be boisterous and laughing secretly over wine, saying 'we told you so.'

Obviously the only solution is to succumb and drift. To drop out of work and leisure and be drawn by the attractions of a ravaged terrain and encounters we find in the psycho-geographic subversion of crass cosmopolitanism. And because it is almost obvious that we have exhausted 'the world' it is only but logical to drop out and turn our heads away. Instead, listening to secret hum-drum of promoting sustainable communities. No this is not about buying those 'green' fabrics, environment friendly designer tote/shopping bags or even buying franchise coffee beans grown by poor farmers in Africa. This Wednesday, Mark Salvatus invites Philippine FreeRunners, TAO-Pilipinas, Diego Maranan and YP-Design Challenge Winners to present their winning designs to make the world a better place. Undeniably love will heal the world. So, come and feel the love! No, don't wait till that barbaric Valentines day, it may all be too late.

w.o.p JAN 28 | Mark Salvatus URBAN PLAN + Andrea Teran MONTHLY PERIOD READINGS

2009-01-26T18:29:00.000-08:00

Feeble attempts to conjecture cosmic collisions and astrological fluctuations should be shamelessly dismissed as purely superstitious. In no way can the backward movement of Mercury towards the sun affect interpersonal communication, business, travel and the like. Delays and introspection are of course, caused by more sinister emergent events such as a freak road accident, broken alarm clocks, crowded commuter trains, engine trouble, a new US president, police raid or even the partial eclipse of the sun. Still the only thing that can derail utopian visions of urban life can come from lack of inspiration or sleep, perhaps. So come over this Wednesday as we continue to sketch the cities we love most as Mark Salvatus invites Kristoffer Ardeña, Jay Pacena, Mannet Villariba and Wesley Valenzuela for another weekly affair. And because nothing is ever enough, Andrea Teran's Monthly Period Reading comes back after a two months hiatus (thanks to that overdrawn holiday back in 2008) hosting Writers in Conversation between Mabi David and Mark Cayanan. As usual we expect you to beat that midweek hump, see you on Wednesday.

CHRIS BROWN / GANGAN ENSEMBLE JANUARY 8-9

2009-01-06T03:43:00.000-08:00

OPEN STUDIO SESSIONS
CHRIS BROWN / GANGAN ENSEMBLE
JANUARY 8-9, 8-10PM

Because ours is a time obsessed with transparency as it is always more interesting to see behind the thought process of any creative endeavor. Even more so now that art is increasingly becoming another fashionable trend. Hang around exhibition openings and for sure you will catch conversations among collectors and enthusiasts mulling over the hottest ‘fashion finds.’ Well, it’s a wait-and-see now with the global financial crisis looming over our shoulders. Still what has market dictates have to do with obscurantist experimental sound practice? Precisely the point, as it neither appeals to any commercial or accessible taste, it looks back at our consumptive compulsions driven by a world manipulated by desires.

The OPEN STUDIO SESSIONS invites the public to re-think their position in the process of artistic production. A seeming back-stage pass, only this time there are no VIP lines! For two days, CHRIS BROWN and GANGAN ENSEMBLE open up their creative space to the public as they negotiate their way around the creative process, strategies of collaboration, methods of performance and composition of electronic music and radio transmission – touching upon various issues in composition, improvisation and performing electronic music. The sessions lead up to TRANSMISSION GANGAN, an open air video/sound performance at the parking space of CUBAO X on January 10. So come, if you are the action-hero-film type, this is the best time to catch the artists as they wrestle each other’s process.

FREE ADMISSION. BAR OPENS 7PM

w.o.p JAN 7 | Mark Salvatus URBAN PLAN

2009-01-05T19:38:00.001-08:00

JANUARY 7, BAR OPENS 7PM
WOP RESIDENT MARK SALVATUS WITH
GEM URDANETA, BUEN CALUBAYAN AND JONG PAIREZ

"Kidnap someone and make them happy." Wear your Sunday best and catch a ferry ride along Pasig River. Remember to close your eyes, lest you miss out on devilish details of history. Stroll along the least navigated paths; under the bridge; the dark, crowded, and rowdy eskinita and leave your markings. Never mind the looming disorientation, burning heat of the sun nor the sticky pungent city smells, our stories are woven in the streets. Our lives unfolding between the public and private. Should it all be too much to bear, there is nothing else left to do but throw kisses in the air. If you can't beat them don't even try.

How do we write the city? In varying degrees of love and hate? Mark Salvatus, WOP resident, embarks on a stroll of our beloved cities to investigate how artists, creatives, by-standers, and the public see the city in different perspectives. Taking a step further and begging committed actions. Yes, opinions will be strongly solicited. Kicking off his eight-week residency is an introduction to Neo-Urban Planner along with a presentation from Gem Urdaneta, sound installation from Buen Calubayan and Jong Pairez's Postal Box Project. The holidays are finally over, we can be normal once again! See you for the initial installment of Urban Plan.

NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS

2008-12-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM GREEN PAPAYA!!!

Young Designers Guild takeover Green Papaya

2008-12-06T20:40:00.000-08:00

SERIAL KILLERS | December 6

2008-11-30T01:20:00.000-08:00

Serial Killers

BEA CAMACHO / MARIANO CHING / LENA COBANGBANG / LOUIE CORDERO / GASTON DAMAG / JED ESCUETA / LYRA GARCELLANO / NONA GARCIA / DAVID GRIGGS / GERALDINE JAVIER / ROMEO LEE / POW MARTINEZ / DONNA MIRANDA / JONATHAN OLAZO / GARY-ROSS PASTRANA / ANGELO SUAREZ / GERARDO TAN / MARIA TANIGUCHI / WIRE TUAZON

OPENING 6PM DECEMBER 6, EXHIBIT UNTIL DECEMBER 20

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS / WWW.GREENPAPAYAARTPROJECTS.ORG

41-B T. GENER ST. CORNER KAMUNING RD. QUEZON CITY

INQUIRIES 0918 9457387

Repetition and seriality have been a recurrent mode of artistic production to some of the most prolific contemporary artists. Umberto Eco, famous Italian scholar of semiotics, believes that, today, there is in operation a sense of aesthetic repitition involving a radical conception of seriality: one that ‘wholly escapes the “modern” idea of literature and art.’ This involves a new concept, ‘the infinity of the text,’ whereby ‘variability’ as a purely formal principle becomes the object of aesthetic pleasure and interest. Serial Killers is a response to parallel notions of seriality.

Seriality as conceptual strategy, considered by most critics as a postmodern aesthetic, is reflected in the works of these selected artists in their seemingly endless body of work, blurring randomness, and, or predetermination, in their repetitiousness.

Benedict Anderson Drinks THE NOT-SO UNOFFICIAL RECEPTION November 21 (Friday) 8pm

2008-11-14T16:37:00.001-08:00

Benedict Anderson Drinks
THE NOT-SO UNOFFICIAL RECEPTION November 21 (Friday) 8pm

In true Manila tradition of welcoming guests, Green Papaya is honored to host the not-so unofficial reception for esteemed scholar Benedict Anderson with San Miguel beer and isaw. Dr. Anderson, professor emeritus of Cornell University, will deliver the closing remarks of The 5th Annual Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference - Manila 2008.

Anderson is best known for his book Imagined Communities, in which he systematically describes the major factors contributing to the emergence of nationalism in the world. He defined a nation as “an imagined political community that is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” He currently teaches in the International Studies at Cornell, and heads its Indonesian program. He is also widely regarded as an authority on 20th century Indonesian history and politics, and has a particular research interest in Southeast Asian culture and dynamics.

STATES OF INDEPENDENCE/ The 5th Annual Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference - Manila 2008 is hosted by the School of Humanities of the Ateneo de Manila University with the Society of Filipino Archivist for Film and Loyola Film Circle in partnership with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

DOMESTIC BLISS | Christina Quisumbing Ramilo

2008-11-07T22:49:00.000-08:00

Domestic Bliss
CHRISTINA QUISUMBING RAMILO
November 12-29, 2009

“ Domestic Bliss chronicles my coming back to the Philippines after being away for 23 years.

I initially used the renovation of my grandmother’s termite-infested house to reexamine and address personal issues: wanting to recapture the place i grew up in, coming to terms with my ageing parents, finding closure from past relationships and reestablishing myself in Manila.

The objects were constructed and reconstructed mostly from discarded materials used and found in my parents and grandmother’s house, and from earlier works done in New York. The works speak about the time I was constantly moving from one place to the next and my desire to find home wherever that may be.” (Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, November 2008)

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
41 T. Gener St. corner Kamuning Road, Quezon City
Phone/Fax +632 7941628
VIEWING HOURS: WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY 2-7 PM

no more mysteries | WOP November 5

2008-11-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

NO MORE MYSTERIES THIS WEDNESDAY

Admittedly October was indeed a whole month of partying-hell month. Yes, we have survived the dizzying and yet gratifying storm of exhibition openings, talks, festivals, tributes, launchings, and receptions. Thanks to undying testimonials of love. As usual the rains have been unpredictable and before early Christmas carols seal off our sensitivities we bring you another mind-fuck evening as we host another screening of Dahci Ma's Mysteries of Nature (this one's for those of you who missed it the last two times).

Meanwhile, openness is a reality not one of us can escape. It feeds on the machine of our times, like a leech sucking the blood out of us, nevertheless creating for reflection, subversion and communication. Diego Maranan speaks about Open Source Dance Project, a tool for licensing and sharing choreography as one possible way to build global community of dancers and track the flow of choreographic ideas using the Web.

This one's almost a dance night and we have been waiting for you fanatics to come out of the cave to play. You know you want to! After drinks with the artists shall follow.

w.o.p OCT 29 | MONTHLY PERIOD READINGS + Diego Maranan Invisible Visible

2008-10-28T01:39:00.000-07:00

MONTHLY PERIOD readings and open mic OCTOBER 29
bar opens 6pm

Andrea Teran hosts another readings night and open mic, featuring a conversation between Daryll Delgado and Easy Fagela on fiction and songwriting/poetry. Andrea Teran's Monthly Period is part Wednesdays Open Platform residency Program.
Diego Maranan conducts a workshop "Using Google Sites to Quickly Build Your Own Website" (bring your own laptop) as part of his Wednesdays Open Platform residency program on Data Visualization. http://theinvisiblevisible.diegomaranan.com http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com Ongoing Exhibitions: "Random Cliques" / Photographs by Brendan Goco "Efface" / Installation by Bea Camacho

BEA CAMACHO | Efface OCTOBER 23

2008-10-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

w.o.p OCTOBER 22 DIEGO MARANAN | The Visible, Invisible

2008-10-19T20:13:00.000-07:00

THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE

W.O.P OCTOBER 22 | DIEGO MARANAN

Last week's Wednesday will mark one of those many unforgettable gathering of the fringe. And because we are only but humans who need the dynamic cycle of rest and play, this Wednesday is a sober but engaging meanwhile Diego Maranan continues to hold fort at Green Papaya. The last weeks have seen intense one-on-one discussions. Check out the detailed schedule of his activities at http://theinvisiblevisible.diegomaranan.com And do check http://wednesdaysmnlove.blogspot.com for more reflexive insights of his residency. On October 29 Diego organizes a workshop so if you fancy anything and would like to suggest topics around his research do visit his website and cast out your vite. We will be waiting!

BRENDAN GOCO | Random Cliques

2008-10-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

What to make out of our uneasy compulsion to react instantaneously? Risking failure over brilliance and vice versa. Yet then again, it is always because of the need to capture that which will only be lost in an instant. The way a heartbeat skips its pre-destined path. Sometimes, reflection poses itself as a luxury not many can afford. A figure lurking amidst our brilliant and weakest emotions. And still these vulnerable moments which memory has betrayed bear witness to time and period in history most often unnoticed, if not forgotten. Brendan Goco bares it all with faithful documentation of these sinister nights. As if to remind us that indeed time has passed, as he shares with us snapshots of artists, people, talkers and hangers-on that complete such Random Cliques. In this rare occasion beyond the pages of Multiply, Facebook and Flicker he tells the story of our faces, acts and random broken realities.

OCT15 DIEGO MARANAN + BRENDAN GOCO Random Cliques + Fete de la Wasaque

2008-10-12T18:09:00.000-07:00

There is such a thing called constructive mopping. Then the can of worms have been opened. Not necessarily bad. As we persistently defy those mid-week blues, we invite you to come out again to play this Wednesday at Green Papaya as this week's line-up get heftier than usual.

Diego Maranan makes his workspace public at Green Papaya allowing scrutiny to his library of about 80 books on art, technology, performance and sociology (plus a selection of books from childhood!) Everyone is welcome to poke and snoop around. Book worms, you know who you are!

Meanwhile, the persistent night owl comes out with a long due peek into tons of flicker prints that Brendan Goco has amassed throughout the years with Random Cliques which opens earlier in the evening. For those who want to catch a glimpse of your own selves, this is the time.

And because we know that this is not enough SABAW MEDIA ART KITCHEN caps off their quick but nasty Fete dela Wasaque Festival of Experimental Music and Video with E.X.I.S.T-Inconnuictu, Ugong, Blend:er, Elemento, Blums Borres, Tad Ermitaño, Tengal and Justice Yeldman.

JO HOLDER drinks - the UNOFFICIAL RECEPTION

2008-10-03T00:36:00.000-07:00

Green Papaya welcomes Jo Holder to the local community the traditional way, with beer and isaw sans balut. Jo Holder is founder and director of The Cross Art Projects in Sydney. The Cross Art Project promotes contemporary art and curatorial practices that cross establishment grids and enable small-scale investigations. It works to the trope of crossing: artistic currents, disciplines, art and public issues and local affairs. She was responsible for the selection of Poklong Anading to The Cross Art Projects Residency through Ateneo Art Awards in 2006.