Buttressing Beleaguered Imaginations

Take the globe that vomitted Dada into being, add more than 12 decades of so called technical progress, a runaway internet, a frankenstein automated intelligence threat that at least guarantees obsolecense if not extinction for a good number of the current non-billionaire class, now running into at least more than 8 billion of us. You now get the reason why 2026 is not only the centennial plus plus of the programmed irrationality that made intellectuals give up on our incipient rationality as humans, embodied in both Surrealism and Dada. It is a fitting tribute to the self destructive inner reflex that accompanies all of our evolution towards what we dreamed was utopia, with a different spelling, u replaced by dis. This is not an irrevocable monolothic fate, by any means. But, it is a large swathe of our perceived and projected future, and, unless held in check, unless restrained, unless regulated and legislated by our larger communitarian will that has at least woken up to the hard truth that while science may be the arbiter of many truths, it may also be the weaver of as many deceptions.

Central to this crisis or critical development is the Centralisation of power, knowledge, information, ability in a class of humans that cannot but believe that they have parity with the rest of the planet. They might be labelled dictators, demagogues, billionaires, broligarchs, Darwinists, determinists, tyrants, CEOs among a long list of now villanous associations. Long ago, approx 24 years in the past, I wrote a keynote on the choice many 20′”century artists had to make: It was one between Diversification or Homogenization. Allow for variety as organisms, or reduce them to easier to control unitary structures, homogenized, obedient, but unimaginative. Dictatorships and fascists prefer this option, and the substitution of erratic human variety with controllable machines is one approach for the already very powerful who cannot tolerate to lose a little of their wealth or clout.

A full quarter into the millenium of wonders as envisioned by the enlightenment seers, between the contrasting but complementary predictions of Orwell and Huxley, we are rushing headlong into a dark, narrow corridor of autocratic control: Over resources, over decisions, over whatever free will we believe we still posses. This show, Lakambini ng Galilim, is a provocation, an aesthetic trigger to this select group of figurative practitioners to manifest, for themselves, and maybe for generations thereafter, what it might be that would embody a Muse to weather this despair with. As much of visual art is also succumbing to the seductive flatness of jargonized ornament, I have sought to challenge these Filipino figurists from multiple generations, Cholo Apostol, Jeho Bitancor, Kristoffer Brasileño, Ronn Bulahan, Isobel Francisco, DengCoy Miel, Pinggot Zulueta and myself to conjure avatars of sustenance, images that might dwell in our hearts but inspire and cohere us in these times of excessive choice, muses that might congeal our spirits as we fight our way through this heretofore unknown era of transition into either glorious prosperity or tepid conformity with the agenda of the super rich. These promises of enhanced and propserous and carefree futures, are, by the way, made by this very same ruling class that will not yield a millimeter of their gains, and, we somehow seem to sense where that will all lead.