Best Pesticide

Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself. — George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

There are many jokes in art these days but very few laughs. Modern art — whatever the hell that means nowadays — is full of practical jokes and mischievous pranks. A lot of it is actually pretty clever while others are just downright ridiculous. But is any of it actually funny? The kind that you can’t help indulge in despite yourself or your cultured or learned tastes like, for example, when you watch the Joey de Leon-Rene Requiestas starrer Elvis & James? No one really laughs at art anymore — and that’s quite a shame.

It’s not that there isn’t anything funny enough to laugh about these days — it’s more due to the fact that we’ve become so bored with everything (including ourselves) that we can only manage to communicate feelings in digital emoticons. We use stimulants — drugs, reality television, extreme sports — to excite us; we use depressants — meds, teleseryes, running on a

Master Cooking Boy: During the opening, guests were treated to not just art and celebrity but caldereta as well!

treadmill at the gym — to suppress the crash that inevitably follows. To laugh for real, we won’t need new amusements; we’ll just need genuine ones.

Rodolfo Amorsolo Rivera and Rodolfo Sabayton Jr.’s two-man exhibit “Ang Tao’y Marupok” at the Green Papaya art gallery may well rectify that. After all, the pair’s past work especially with alternative comic icon Ramon Bautista was already considered a cult classic of modern Filipino comedy. These included segments for the defunct MTV Philippines like “Dan Michael: Master Magician” and “The Ramon Bautista Show,” music videos for anarcho-jazz-punk outfit The Radioactive Sago Project and the cult TV series, Strangebrew. For their latest exhibition, it can be assured that they won’t be playing it serious — at least, not too much.

“Photographs yung plano namin ni RA,” says Sabayton. “Kung sino yung pupunta kukunan ng picture. At the same time may live na internet broadcast sa Ustream galing sa gallery.”

Added to that, he reveals that the two will be cooking as well. “Mag luluto si R.A. ng sinigang or caldereta. Mag assist ako.”

“What shall transpire, no one knows for sure except for the duo who plans to take photos, interview people, play their favorite LP, or even cook caldereta,” reads the curatorial text accompanying the show. “There is no guarantee of course because guarantees are performatives that have no need for proof.”

In short, anything goes. Something that Sabayton himself says is indicative of all their best work together. Being spontaneous is key. “Kung paano yung process sa pag shoot minsan ganon lang, man,” he explains. “Papatawag lang si RA ng kwentuhan tapos dun minsan na mabubuo yung concept.” He also points out that a lot of what they do they just figure out on the day itself. Or if there’s something pre-planned, more likely than not it’ll be changed once they get to the location.

The laughter heard that night the exhibit opened wasn’t planned or slotted into schedule — it just happened. It might’ve been the photographs displayed on the wall, the projection of the ongoing online broadcast on the wall or just the satisfaction of eating a freshly cooked meal. Or it might just be that we all wanted to be there and actually hang out. Whatever it is, it’s increasingly rare.

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The Ephemera of Disposable Goods, a program of current curator-in-resident Lian Ladia, is a series of collaborations between two artists of similar genres investigating social sculptural projects based on context of time/place, relational works and encounters. This project aims to make available to featured artists Green Papaya’s space as an open studio facility where artists and public can engage in discussions 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 leading to a documentary installation at the end of each project.

Green Papaya is located at 41B T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Road), Quezon City. For inquiries call +63918-9457387. Visit www.greenpapayaartprojects.org or http//papayapost.blogspot.com.