U N D E R
B E L L Y
N AP J A M I R I I RO B I N R I V E RA TAP I O S N E L L M A N
U N D E R B E L LY
PUBLISHED ON THE OCCASION OF
U N D E R B E L LY N AP J A M I R I I RO B I N R I V E RA TAP I O S N E L L M A N
Calle Wright 1890 Vasquez St., 1004 Manila, Philippines 22 March – 23 June 2019
Copyright © Nap Jamir II, Robin Rivera, and Tapio Snellman 2020 Artwork and captions © Nap Jamir II, Robin Rivera, and Tapio Snellman 2020 Photography © Calle Wright 2020 All rights reserved Published by Calle Wright Calle Wright, 1890 Vasquez St., Malate, Manila, Philippines www.callewright.com Cover art and book design by Celline Marge Mercado
U N D E R B E L LY
Underbelly Arianna Mercado Curator, Calle Wright
There is a hum that can be heard from every corner of the space. Hardly enough time for a pause, it builds up almost as fast as it winds down. After a few minutes, it begins to occupy not only the corners of the house, but it seeps into even your thinking that suddenly, there’s nothing else to understand. Through strained speech, you can no longer hear yourself talk or follow previous thoughts; words are engulfed by the repetition of the cymbal. Underbelly at Calle Wright posits an atmospheric experience to view an exhibition. The three artists, Nap Jamir II, Robin Rivera, and Tapio Snellman worked across different mediums and frequencies to create works that can immerse and engulf. Underbelly sought to understand the unseen and unnoticed. While the artists unpacked different meanings behind the underbelly in their work, the exhibition ultimately served to expose what is often hidden from view, whether sinister or not, and perhaps even redirect the question into asking why these may be hidden and shied away from at all.
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The three artists were brought together by Judy Freya Sibayan, whose work at Calle Wright unearthed archives that spoke about her practice and the people she worked with. Snellman had collaborated with Sibayan in the 2000s for a Boysen initiative to create murals across the metro. His work decorated the walls of the Araneta underpass for a time before it was painted over (as are all, if not most, of the murals from this project). For Underbelly, Snellman was drawn to the urban scape surrounding Calle Wright. Using shots taken with a drone, Snellman’s video work sought to provide a clear distinction between the city’s foreground and background, exposing Manila skyscraper’s facelessness as juxtaposed with more bustling scenes from below. Jamir and Sibayan worked together on exhibitions in the 70s through the Cultural Center of the Philippines. At this time, Jamir used photography to play with form and medium, making use of the then-famous Photo Me to create uncanny portraits and reflect a mirror onto the machine. Now working as a filmmaker, Jamir references his experience in set construction by creating jalousies to give us a view into fuzzy disintegrating images covered in dust and dirt. Jamir’s fascinations for the creation of his work stemmed from ideas of translucence and reflection. His work played with light, allowing it to shine past to make clear an image or bounce it back to reflect figures on the wall. Rivera collaborated with Sibayan through her project Scapular Gallery Nomad. He recorded Lucrecia Kasilag’s composition on cassette tape for Sibayan. Rivera’s work in Underbelly reflected his practice as a sound engineer and researcher. Using high fidelity speakers, Rivera chose to isolate elements of sound that have otherwise been overlooked and misunderstood. With drums used as a jumping off point, Wash intended to make clear the delicate sound that occurs after the initial crash of metal through an eight piece audio work utilizing different kinds of cymbals and mallets.
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In many ways, the three artists’ work for Underbelly reconfigured the boundaries of the house, despite being inspired by its architecture. Some instincts felt almost impossible considering the space’s construction. Their work recalibrated Calle Wright to be something other than what it was in order to contain a distinct atmosphere that provided the viewer with a specific environment. Underbelly was the first project where we covered the windows, avoiding the light to be let in. In the same vein, it was also the first project to work with video projections, providing hurdles to be worked through given the configuration of the house’s architecture. Despite leaving the light out, Underbelly sought to bring other things in. Jamir brought in dirt and leaves from the outside, Rivera brought in sounds to cancel out the ambient noises from the bustling of jeeps and cars, and Snellman brought in footage of the neighborhood itself to explore the lived history of the house and the streets of Malate. The underbelly may be understood in different ways and through different lenses. For some, the thought of what is hidden may leave a bitter aftertaste and Jamir, Rivera, and Snellman taunt their viewers through exposure, providing a cacophonous landscape of what it means to be fully within the belly of the beast.
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Interior, ground floor exhibit space PAGE 11
Fragments V, 2019 Nap Jamir II Assemblage, glass, metal, wood
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Fragments III–IV, 2019 Nap Jamir II Assemblage, glass, metal, wood
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Fragments VI, 2019 Nap Jamir II Photograph on paper, wheatpaste
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Fragments VII, 2019 Nap Jamir II Photograph on paper, wheatpaste
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Notes on Underbelly Nap Jamir II
When I was invited to be part of a three artist group show in Calle Wright, the first thought that entered my mind was to produce a body of work that would interact with the physicality of the gallery space itself. When our curator Arianna Mercado came up with Underbelly as the title of the show, that gave me a definite direction as to how I would produce my works. For the works on the ground floor, I imagined that I would produce images that explored the undersurface or “underbelly” of the gallery walls. I created windows that would look at the inside of the walls and assembled three wooden “windows” with glass jalousie panes. Beyond them, I wanted to give the impression of an archaeological excavation. I used a collage from my Torso series images that have been aged with soil, leaves and twigs—adding patina to the assemblage, in which the window frames and glass panes are covered with dust and aged. I also installed collage images on the outside cement walls that border the gallery structure.
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In one of the rooms upstairs are three photo-collages that I installed against the wall. This series is a new direction that my work has evolved into. Taking inspiration from the texture of the cement walls of the room and the patterns of sunlight entering the room, I started crumpling portions of the photo-collage in order to introduce the tactile element of volume to the work. The patterns of light cast strong shadows across the surface of the work. Sunlight also played a key to the installation of four strips of glass mirrors where I attached photo transparencies to the wall. The idea was to replicate the deconstruction approach that I apply to my photo-collages. The rays of sunlight hit the surface of the glass and reflected the images against the wall. I installed the glass panels horizontally so that the images reflected on the wall reveal a deconstructed assembly of the photo-collage image.
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Fragments II, 2019 Nap Jamir II Acetate, glass PAGE 21
Fragments VIII, 2019 Nap Jamir II Duratrans
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Fragments X–XI, 2019 Nap Jamir II Assemblage Fragments XI, 2019 Nap Jamir II Assemblage
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Interact with Torso Nap Jamir II
For my interactive Torso images, the reader is invited to create his/her own interpretive collage of the three successive images by tearing parts of the pages to reveal the image below. Let’s assume they are Page I, II, III.
To download the official interactive pages from Nap Jamir II’s Torso series, send an email to info@callewright.com
PAGE I–III
Torso 001, 2019 Torso 002, 2019 Torso 003, 2019 Nap Jamir II Assemblage
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III
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PAGE 24–25
View of the ground floor exhibit space
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Wash, 2019 Robin Rivera Audio
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Notes on Wash Robin Rivera
Cymbals are popularly known as atonal, nosy, and bellicose instruments. But like many other acoustic instruments, their subtler sounds are often masked in contemporary ensemble music. Most drummers know of a cymbal’s sonic component called wash, a sustained sound which follows the initial attacking crash and ping, and lasts until its ultimate release. Wash is also accompanied by other sounds, such as ring which is the high end of the sonic spectrum, and hum which occupies the lower end. All these sounds are delicate, complex, difficult to record, and often overlooked. The following works bring wash to the forefront, and reveals its dynamic interaction with other component cymbal sounds.
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Wash, 2019 Robin Rivera Audio
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Interior, 2nd floor exhibit space
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To listen to Robin Rivera’s Wash on Soundcloud, scan the QR code.
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To listen to Robin Rivera’s Wash on YouTube, scan the QR code.
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PAGE 32–35
The Making of Wash
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PAGE 36–39
Installation views of Grounded by Tapio Snellman
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PAGE 40–41
Vertical sequence from Grounded
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Close-up view of the installation of Grounded
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Notes on Underbelly Tapio Snellman
BACKGROUND The mental projection of a place precedes the first visit of a far away place long before actual travel. And while the reality of experiencing that place mostly overrides the preceded projection, fragments of the imaginary will always colour how the place is perceived, regardless of how familiar the place will ultimately become. That’s how I continue experiencing Manila: on one hand as an outsider with the privilege that comes with being excused to make unproven assumptions and on the other hand as someone with a life-long fondness towards a place that is impossible to fully grasp. Manila as a word and presence was relayed to me from early childhood by my uncle and his family who lived there at that time. Although it took me a couple of decades to actually see the city with my own eyes, the vivid stories about it took hold of my subconsciousness as if I was familiar with the place.
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According to those recounts, Manila was a place of tropical gardens, leafy streets and smiling people in white uniforms. It was a city of decadent parties, hosted by a handsome first lady, who liked dressing up in rubies and dedicating her songs to the poor children of shanty towns. My Uncle Klaus was the Ambassador of Finland to the Philippines in the early 1980s. As the relationship between those two nations was unproblematic, his life in Manila during the Marcos era was mostly spent creating connections on tennis courts and making introductions at opulent residences. But while he was a diplomat through and through and his influence was limited, he was aware of the inequalities and suffering caused by the dictatorship and always made a point to treat everyone, whether a servant or statesman with exactly the same courtesy. This is what remained my understanding of that country, until 15 years later, while working as an architect in Tokyo, I was first able to visit Manila. It was an exciting adventure to finally experience it first hand, but my real personal connection with the city was instigated only a year later after that first visit by a random encounter in London. At the 1997 opening of the exhibition Cities on the Move, about the cultural impact of East Asian urbanisation, I had a brief conversation with curator and fellow artist Judy Freya Sibayan. We both had our work on display as part of the exhibition and I told her about my connection with Manila, her hometown. An online exchange of ideas started between us, culminating some 15 years later in Judy inviting me to Manila. The task she gave me was to create a 600 meter long mural as part of Boysen Paints’ Project EDSA series of public art in Manila. The creation of Cubao Incision during two months spent in Manila turned out to be a defining moment in my career as an Urbanist and architectural film maker. The
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experience of working on one of Manila’s busiest intersections triggered me to use the concrete wall as a canvas to reflect that intensity. My ambition was to take any clues and inspiration from the site itself and to celebrate what was already there, rather than to decorate the underpass with ornaments. I saw the underpass as an incision through layers of infrastructure such as sewage pipes as a vital underbelly that keeps the city alive and represented that on the surface of the concrete walls. Seven years later, when approached by Calle Wright to come and create an exhibition, it was instinctively clear that I would somehow need to start exploring where I had finished previously. Disturbingly at my arrival in Manila I discovered that the mural in Cubao had been painted over. It felt as if I was going to have to build my new work on something that was no longer available. And rather than starting from Cubao—my research had now relocated to the older neighbourhood of Malate, where Calle Wright is situated.
VIDEO INSTALLATION For the Underbelly commission it felt right to start looking for inspiration with the physical gallery itself. The smallish villa is shaded by leafy trees and hidden behind a gate. It’s domestic in size and modest in appearance. But only a block away similar homes have been recently demolished and 40–50 story condominium towers are going up. The clash is immense and from the start that presented a theme that I felt needed investigating. Malate’s street level presents itself as a cultured, textured and somewhat timeless place with distinct elements of Filipino life and identity. But when flying a drone camera vertically up above rooftops, the perception of the city alters dramatically: an anonymous and generic megacity emerges of few cultural clues to help place it
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in the world. To replicate that sensation, I created 16 video tableaus of the camera rising up vertically, from the intimate street space to dramatic urban vistas. While creating these tableaus, I wondered if I could find a voice to paint a context of what was happening. That came naturally in the form of a retired professor living next door to the gallery and who was willing to be interviewed on video for the installation. Mrs. Erlinda Paez represents a continuity of life and tradition in a dramatically altering neighbourhood. Her voice and presence reflects old Manila, encompassing the linguistic and social clues of the Catholic Spain, the international lifestyle introduced by the Americans as well as the unique Pinoy culture of family and society. Her house remains an understated and calm reflection of a personal history in an increasingly generic part of the city. And the narrative of her voice creates a historic context to the changing urbanity. In the exhibition space, the tableaus were projected onto Venetian blinds covering one of the large windows. The interview with Mrs. Erlinda Paez was shown on a tiny screen that was all but visible inside the wardrobe. Her very personal testimonial created an interesting juxtaposition with the black and white drone footage. It wasn’t so much that the words corresponded with the image. Rather it was what was not said about the altering cityscape that was remarkable. I created the film version of the installation, renamed Grounded, in London after the exhibition ended. It combines the drone footage with the interview and imagery shot in Mrs. Paez’s garden. The imagery alternates between generic and specific and explores the world from an individual’s specific point of view. While doing so, it reveals a worldwide phenomena of changing neighbourhoods and the increasingly generic banality of a city created by developers.
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PAGE 48–50
Video stills from Grounded
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Interview with Erlinda Paez as seen on the film Grounded
“Where shall I begin? Malate and Ermita are the two districts where the old Manila families lived. The trees here are very old. The trees were shaded and the houses were big. That’s where the wealthy lived, they lived with their servants and chauffeurs with expensive cars. When I got married in 1959, the old families where still here. And then, lining the street all the way down were families well known in the country. Among them was my fatherin-law who was the first Filipino president of the Philippine National Railroad, because before him, the ones who owned the railways were British, I believe. He was the first Filipino [president of the PNR]. We moved in with the family for a few months and then my father-in-law had this place
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made for us to live in. I think he built this in 1960. So it is… 40 + 19… 60 years old. This house is 60 years old! We never moved away. This is where we stayed all the time. I was born in Manila. I was born at the PGH, Philippine General Hospital, just several blocks away from here. And my youngest brother was born in the house. So I don’t know if I was the first one to be born in a hospital! But my parents were not Manileños. My father and mother come from a small town. I think of it as a Jesuit town, because the Jesuits where the ones who built the church there. My great grandfather was pure Spanish and married into Chinese Filipino mestizas. I was born in 1935, and then shortly after, the war broke out here in the Pacific. What I have heard of Malate during that time is that a lot of people died. Not only were the Japanese killing people and burning house but the Americans themselves, when they were trying to flush out the Japanese in their hiding places, they were also bombing certain areas and the houses here were burned out. And the house behind you, the entire family perished. During the Japanese occupation I was not in Manila at all. So when we came back, that’s the only time perhaps when I can think of Manila. My memories would largely be confined to the Singalong area. Compared to Malate and Ermita, that was a newer district for the newer families who could maybe afford to come from the provinces to build houses in Manila. That was the place to go and the Ayalas were the ones who developed Singalong.
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Video still of Erlinda Paez from Grounded
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And then there was this area called Escolta. That was the elite store at that time, where the most expensive things could be bought, patronised by the wealthy of the city. La Estrella del Norte, Oceanic Commercial, Aguinaldo’s, Botica Boie… Makati at that time was wilderness! And slowly the commercial establishments arrived here in Malate. Mabini and Del Pilar Streets were the places of bars and places which tourists and foreigners frequented. Even my husband and I, when we were maturing and needed exercise, we would go out and walk by the sea. And there was a Jesuit priest, Father Reuter, who would walk from Santa Ana to say mass here in Saint Paul University which is just here, around the corner. But first he would go and walk to the sea to bathe, no! To refresh himself! It was still possible to do that. It was clean. In the beginning the sea was very near us. That’s why, you know, when I hear of the plans that they are going to reclaim all the lands from Malabon to Bataan, its distressing, because we would be very far from the sea by then! Maybe you can count with the fingers of your two hands, the old families who have stayed here. Most of them have moved to the exclusive villages of Makati and Alabang. Eventually, the past has to give into the present.”
To watch Tapio Snellman’s Grounded, scan the QR code.
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Installation views of Remain
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Invitations to Underbelly
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About the Artists
NAP JAMIR II is a photographer, cinematographer and director in advertising and feature films. Jamir began his artistic practice in the 70s and was awarded the Thirteen Artists Award in 1974. He has participated in the ASEAN Traveling Exhibition of Paintings / Photography and represented the country in the Valparaiso Biennale of Prints. As a cinematographer, Jamir has worked on both independent and commercial projects. His work as a cinematographer has been recognized and awarded through CineMalaya, To Farm Film Festival, Urian Awards, and Young Critics Circle Awards. Jamir is currently a senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines Film Institute, the UP College of Fine Arts, and the Asia Pacific Film Institute. He frequently conducts workshops with the Film Development Council of the Philippines in developing film communities in Mindanao and the Visayas.
ROBIN RIVERA is an Associate Professor of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Broadcast Communication from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, a Master of Arts degree in Communications from the Ateneo De Manila University, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Philippine Studies from the University of the Philippines in Diliman. His areas of study are music and music production, popular art, and sound studies. He is also a practicing composer, performing musician, and recording producer. He was the sound researcher for the Batangas City Museum, provided the sound design for the UP Vargas Museum’s 2008 Dramaturgical Revelations of Everyday Life exhibit, and produced music albums by the UP Cherubim and Seraphim, Elena Mirano, Kontragapi, Eraserheads, Dong Abay, Sugarfree, Peryodiko, and Bullet Dumas.
TAPIO SNELLMAN is a London-based filmmaker, architect, urbanist and visual artist engaged predominantly in architectural and urban subjects. His work includes immersive film installations, documentaries, experimental 3D animation and site-specific film projections for museums, theatre, dance and opera. Snellman’s films and installations have been exhibited internationally, at venues including the V&A, and Tate Modern in London, the Guggenheim Museum and MoMA in New York and frequently as part of the Architecture Biennale in Venice. Born in Helsinki of Finnish/Swiss parentage, Snellman studied in Germany and England and worked in Japan before setting up base in London. Through the curatorship of Judy Freya Sibayan, Snellman was previously commissioned by Boysen’s KNOxOUT Project EDSA in 2012 for a 600m long mural entitled Cubao Incision.
There is a hum that can be heard from every corner of the space. Hardly enough time for a pause, it builds up almost as fast as it winds down. After a few minutes, it begins to occupy not only the corners of the house, but it seeps into even your thinking that suddenly, there’s nothing else to understand. Through strained speech, you can no longer hear yourself talk or follow previous thoughts; words are engulfed by the repetition of the cymbal.
PUBLISHED ON THE OCCASION OF
U N D E R B E L LY N AP J A M I R I I RO B I N R I V E RA TAP I O S N E L L M A N Calle Wright 1890 Vasquez St., 1004 Manila, Philippines 22 March – 23 June 2019