Bartering beauty (before age) in Baguio

Olde freunde Heinrich Maulbecker recently bade farewell to his sexagenarian years, so I just had to comfort him in Baguio City when he appealed for strategies on how to stay sexy for the next decade. Grateful for the experience, too, as I’ll soon have to come up with similar vision-mission commando tactics.

Of course it helped to be enticed with a weekend at The Manor in Camp John Hay, where the prime hotel’s board of directors hosted a grand dinner for the retiring managing director. That’s Heiner — “Down but not out” as a slogan had it on a souvenir card showing him as a young version of St. Sebastian, arrows on the chest and then some.

On that wonderful evening at the John Hay Golf Club Verandah three Saturdays ago, I happily met up with common friends from the Cordilleras as well as the Hyatt’s former band of brothers besides Heiner, among them Bubot Quicho, Gerhard and Joyce Kropp, and Vic Alcuaz.

The dapper humorist Tito Avanceña reunited in turn with his La Salle Greenhills classmates Bob Sobrepeña, Marlo Benitez, Wig Tysmans with ever beloved Carole, and Peng Perez de Tagle with his darling Vicky. Was particularly elated to renew har-de-har-har ties with throwback buddies Herr Bautista with his better half Leonie, Des Bautista, and Mitos Benitez Yñiguez.  

My date was a 15-year-old, so that I had to assure Tito A. and everyone else who cared to listen that she was my granddaughter Pooh, a.k.a. Ava Amica. Thoroughly enjoyed the special bonding weekend with her, too.

Heiner has spent half of his life here, having first been assigned to the Philippines when he was a young man in his 30s. Heck, we all had been young men in our 30s, but soon we’re turning diamond, a prospect that engenders even more laughter over champagne and single malt whisky, on that night a Glenmorangie standard edition. 

As happenstance had it, that day also happened to be a milestone of sorts for the vigorous arts community in Baguio.

Former Fil-Am New Yorker Angela Velasco Shaw had also issued an invite for the opening of the “Markets of Resistance” agora art activity at the Baguio market. Angel dreamed it, built it up, and they came — artists and poets and musicians, crafts folks and market vendors, art aficionados who all partook of the singular event. Regrettably, it ended yesterday. Am sure however that it continues in many other myriad ways, given the concept and spirit that attended the two-week affair. 

As the inaugural multi-disciplinary art and cultural project for the Institute for Heritage, Culture and the Arts in the School of Fine Art and Design at Philippine Women’s University (PWU), “Markets of Resistance” was a collaboration between the institute and Ax(iS) Baguio Art Project.

Angel provides the backgrounder: “Components of the project, beginning June 2014, included formal and informal classroom sessions and three cultural immersion trips to Baguio City, Bontoc and Sagada. Activities with eight PWU students from the School of Fine Arts and Design and Communication Arts, Baguio traditional and contemporary artists, scholars, poets, and cultural community workers included student presentations, artists talks, studio visits, spoken-word events, alternative citywide walking tours conducted by local Baguio artists Willie Magtibay around Baguio markets and tourist attractions, Carlo Villafuerte around the ukay-ukay section of the market, and Rocky Cajigan around Camp John Hay and Baguio cemeteries. We also had film screenings of Kidlat Tahimik’s films.” 

When it opened that weekend of Oct. 24 and 25, it began to feature the market stalls exhibition, performances and film screenings, a poetry reading, and a lecture by anthropologist Padma Perez. It was dear Padma who escorted Pooh and me from Café By The Ruins to the areas in the market where we first caught sight of a couple of eye-catching installations.

Kawayan de Guia et al. had set up a replica of the Statue of Liberty on an angled rooftop at the market, with spaghetti power lines conspiring with supporting wood frames to provide a geometrical Third-World urban aura for the structure. It was titled “De-liberating the Fall.”

Then there was Marta Lovina’s interactive installation “Fantasy World” — with three standee figures, a large Westerner in the center, behind which one can climb up makeshift steps to place a face in the void between hat and body; the same can be done with one of the other two figures depicting natives. Behind the interactive figures is a rich and relevant art collage.

Here’s an excerpt from the artist’s statement:

“My decision to use standees as the focal point of my installation stems from this concept of make-believe identities, momentarily stepping into another time and place with little thought about what typical tourist attraction standees represent.

“The late Baguio artist Santiago Bose’s mixed-media painting ‘Free Trade’ uses a photograph taken by then US Secretary of Interior and zoologist Dean Worcester of the then Mt. Province Governor William Pack. With arms outstretched over two Negritos, Pack demonstrates far more than just the difference in height, he is reinforcing the Western illusion of racial superiority. Pack, as well as Worcester, were social Darwinists. This is just one of thousands of Worcester’s photographs sent back to the US to be archived and some were published in a special issue of National Geographic in 1912. 

“Worcester’s ethnographic photographs were instrumental in forming America’s image of the Philippines. In Bose’s critical interpretation of the original photograph, there is the added dimension of messianism and capitalism which is hidden from plain sight in the original, but nevertheless exists in its various elements. Another quality of this photograph that caught my attention was that of a tourist snapshot. It could easily be read as two foreigners having a bit of fun with the natives, clueless about the implications. 

“This is unsurprising as Baguio is not only known for being the country’s ‘Summer Capital’ — coined during the American occupation. It is also famous for its fearless and insightful indio-genious, lively and ever-evolving arts community. Thus, the installation backdrop is a collage from selected Baguio artists whose works are socially and culturally critical, filled with ironic humor — Santiago Bose’s Dreams, Kawayan de Guia’s Self and the Other 1, photographs of rituals in Ifugao by Tommy Hafalla, and Leonard Aguinaldo’s Screaming Bulol, layered with archival photographs from the bombing of Baguio City during WWII and ethnographic images from the turn of the last century.”

Marta credits the following for collaboration and assistance: Ifugao sculptor Christopher Atiwon; the crew Jun and Dan; Ludz for the painting of the standees; and Jepong Mahiwo for his indispensible everyday presence and troubleshooting.

Project director Angel Shaw brought in PWU students and faculty Abbey Batocabe, Emen Batocabe, Joyce Reyes, Mia Dominguez, Vance Valenzuela, Sarj Casuyon, Christian Sta. Ines, Sam Occeno, Rhona Mae Tuaño, and Raymond Dimayuga.

Baguio artists who took part included Willy Magtibay, Carlo Villafuerte, Leonard Aguinaldo, Jason Domling, Chris Atiwon, Santos Bayucca, Rei Chan, Solana Perez, Dumay Solinggay, Frank Cimatu, Nona Garcia, Gaston Damag, Mm Yu, Tanya Villanueva, Mia Dominguez and Sarj Casuyon.

Angel explained that the artworks were not offered for sale in the traditional form of a monetary exchange.

“Instead, an interested buyer must negotiate with the artist/non artist about what she/he deems to be the equivalent value in terms of goods — the artist/non artist needs in daily life (e.g. sack/s of rice, poultry, meat, coffee, pre-paid phone cards, houseware, children’s necessities, clothing, etc.), which the customer must purchase themselves and then give it to the artist/non artist in exchange for hers/his artwork.”

It was poet-journalist Frank Cimatu who named the stalls — Oblika, Tugmina and Nikimalika — after three Cordillera women who had joined (or were exhibited at) the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904.  

Angel also credits a chain of events for this memorable get-together, which she say may be said to have been in the making since 1988, when NY poet-novelist Jessica Hagedorn introduced her to Santiago Bose during his artist presentation at CCP and art exhibition launch of an installation where Pepito Bosch performed.

“Soon thereafter, I went up to Baguio for a month upon Santi’s invitation to stay at his house to work on a film script called Utang Na Loob/Debt for Life that is still forever evolving. I guess you could say that this was the beginning of my life-long love affair with Baguio, its visionary artists and rich culture. This project is my way of saying thank you, of giving back and continuing the tradition of community building through creative practices.

Brava, Angel, Marta, Padma, et al! Bravo, Baguio!