Four quite sometime, the art scene in Baguio, the city famous for its artist colony and indigenous visual creativity, was said to be dead. Most of its young, homegrown visual artists who emerged out of the sphere of influence of the first-generation of Baguio Arts Guild (BAG) have been selling their art-wares of mostly handpainted T-shirts and ethnic beads along the sidewalks of Session Road. More than lost artistic direction, it was an indication that the 10-year old BAG was not only down and splintered, it had also failed to develop a second line of leaders. With that, it also lost another major asset, its offices at the then Baguio Convention Center, the venue for many years of its most prestigious project, the International Arts Festival, an annual event since 1989. So, when the GSIS (Government Service Insurance Services) took over the property and turned the basement into a mediocre museum, the artist community was left with regret. Underneath the whitewashed walls of the now GSIS Convention Center, four years of festival wall art -- among them, the murals of the likes of Bencab, Charlie Co and Salingpusa's "Payaso," which was painted by the group during their salad days, and which now all could command an estimated P 10 million bid -- have been entombed by ignorance and bureaucratic stupidity. The same Convention Center though, is scheduled to reopen some of its exhibition rooms to showcase the finest works of the best of the world's artists. The Baguio Arts Guild is back on its feet to put the Pines City back in the world art map. After a six-year hiatus, the Baguio International Arts Festival, now on its fifth, resumes with maverick artist Santiago Bose, the first BAG president, again at the helm. Back home temporarily from a series of travel grants and exhibitions abroad, Bose takes the festival from where it left off in 1993, with a pack of mostly performance artists focusing on their creative experiences and contemporary concerns. The festival theme is "Towards the Future: Creativity in the Next Millennium." Santiago Bose -- who is a subject of a new art book being written in Griffith University and hailed as one of the only four Asian artists who have made a cutting-edge in the global art scene through art works that are steeped in regional history -- said, "Art speaks of the sophistication of the minds of the people." He thinks that there is a need to redefine Philippine art, to lift it to a new dimension where the local artists won't be marginalized. "The level of Baguio artists' creativity should go beyond the Igorot, dapat cyberIgorot , Bose said, referring to how much the local art movement has been left behind by the global art scene in terms of form. The Asia-pacific Triennial which he recently attended in Brisbane, Australia, featured art works that were mostly high-tech and computer generated. This year's Baguio festival will emphasize new ways of expression. "Many of the artists in the Philippines are still in the painting mode. These forms are no longer noticed abroad," he added. Thus, on the first day of the festival, Australia's multimedia artist Andrew Garton and Filipino DJ James Jarlego will do interaction works via a radio-internet- linkup with Vancouver's radio announcer and performance artist Hank Bull and DJ Klay Kayumanggi of Berkeley's Free Radio. A digital art workshop for children and other interested people will be held at the M3-03 Cybercafe and Gallery (a.k.a. Cultural Center of Session Road). Computer art experts from here and abroad will facilitate it. Capping each festival day are rave nights and artist parties with either or both Grace Nono and the Pinikpikan Band at Martha Lovina's house in Mines View Park, Villa Romana in Ambuklao Road,, Bencab's Tam-awan Village and Café by the Ruins. Along with art installations for which the festival has been known for, film showings and artists' talks will be featured. The best of Baguio artists such as Kigao, Rishab, Akipeco, Kalaphangonay, Tuls, among others -- who are now claiming their birthright to the tribes, be they lowlanders or highlanders -- will display their works at the Christine's Gallery, Vallejo Hotel, and the various other art galleries in the famous mountain city. Highly focused on performance art, the festival will present the works of Singapore's Jason Lim, USA's Ray Langenbach, Australia's Simon Barley, Indonesia's Iwan Widjono, Japan's Ichi Ikeda and Hong Kong's Kith Tsang, among others. The Philippine's lineup are Denisa Reyes, Jojo Legaspi, Yason Banal, Juan Mor'o Ocampo, Gat Tula peformance group, Lirio Salavador, among others. Perennial scene stealer Rene Aquitania is back in shape from the suicide of his Moroccan wife with a comeback performance. The drone of the Drumming Village will open BAG's new home and art center at the Baguio Botanical Garden -- the Greenhouse Effect Gallery -- a modest architectural model of a building with mud walls and runo sticks, a bamboo species endemic to the Cordillera mountains. Done with assistance from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and Baguio City Architect Ignacio Estipona, it has an innovative fiberglass roof which gives adequate lighting for the artworks as well as great saving from use of electricity. The gallery opened for the first time last June 19 with the group exhibition of its 22 young members and the one-woman performance of "Isang Palabas," a nostalgic and poignant compilation of theatrical monologues about the Pilipina identity, which was written, directed and acted out by Fil-Am Wilma B. Consul, a stage actress and journalist from Oakland, California. Sans any high technology, the modest Greenhouse Effect Gallery --
the center of the festival activities -- is Baguio Arts Guild's ironic
statement for the century.
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reprinted from
Lifestyle section of the Manila Standard