Art Events

Chasing The Human and Non-Human Senses: an Homage to Pedro Manuel
(Ilocos, ca. 1740 - London, May 1810)
16th of September 2022
6:00 - 7:45 PM
57 Marylebone High Street, London

Collaborative and Participatory Performance
Stage 1 Graveyard: 20 Minutes duration
Stage 2 House: 20 Minutes duration

Jun Terra | Gus Albor | Jovi Juan |Noel Ed De Leon

Towards the end of the first day of the conference (from 6 pm) we will head over to Marylebone to see four transnational artists perform Chasing The Human and Non-Human Senses: an Homage to Pedro Manuel (Ilocos, c. 1740 – London, May 1810).

The piece will retrace Pedro’s life as a hydrographer, sailor and Alexander Dalrymple’s * “faithful servant and friend ” through the streets of Marylebone’s 18th c. terraced houses, churches and graveyards.

Transnational artists Jun Terra, Jovi Juan, Gus Albor, and Noel Ed De Leon will be in live action Chasing, Tracing, and Trance channeling Pedro Manuel’s spirit for a symbolic funeral procession in the historic landmarks of Marylebone.

The forty-minute walking performance is an attempt to link both the mourning and memorialisation of a life shaped by adventure, exile and abandonment and to re-inscribe the silence of this remarkable man, one of the earliest named migrant Filipino workers in London.

After the piece, we will head off to Prince Regent’s Pub. If you wish to join us for some beer and fish and chips (KKB) — please sIgn up so we can reserve enough tables. https://forms.office.com/r/a0VtE8mL6F

*Dalrymple served briefly as a Governor General of Manila during the British Occupation in 1762).

(Poster credits: Hand drawing of Pedro is reconstructed from text descriptions and 18th c photos of manservants by Tristan Antonio Juan. The map of Marylebone where Dalrymple’s house was located is here http://www.romanticlondon.org/horwoods-plan/… )

The Artists

Jun Terra is a Poet, Artist, Environmentalist, Art Historian and Musician. He is the author of the book Juan Luna Drawings in the Collection of Dr. Eleuterio Pascual. He is co-founder with David Medalla, Aro Soriano and Marciano Galang of the Arts Laboratory in Manila in 1969. The First Exhibition of Environmental Art was in 1969 with members of Arts Laboratory. He is also a Member of the Artists Liberation Front (ALF), London, 1972, founded by David Medalla and a core member of Artists For Democracy, London, 1974, founded by David Medalla, Guy Brett, John Dugger and Cecilia Vicuna. In 1972, he launched the Red Star Shadow Puppet Theatre in London, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) during David Medalla and John Dugger’s show, “Weaving a House.” Jun Terra is a Jaime V Ongpin Awardee for Investigative Journalism for the essay, “Requiem for the Philippine Forests” serialized in Midweek Magazine.

Noel Ed De Leon is an environmentalist, visual and a performance artist. His work includes archiving as an artistic practice, installation, art created with found objects, experimental sound, video, and multimedia sculpture. De Leon’s work explores the themes of memory, DNA, remembrance, and mapping traces of history through material objects. He has presented performances and installations at the Philippine Embassy of London; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Live Art Development Agency, London; Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Raven Row, London; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center, Manila. Recently he curated an exhibition at GDL.Arch X Venezia Atelier in Italy. Lastly, he is also the Founder of Transnational Movement and Co-director of Batubalani Art Projects. Photo credit : Noel Ed De Leon Live Action: Sounds in Your Head | Sounds in Your Thoughts Vargas Museum, Philippines Image: Insurgence 2019 © noeleddeleon archives.

Jovi is an artist, documentary filmmaker, writer, and technologist living between New York and England. He began his career as an assistant to the renowned minimalist sculptor Donald Judd and went on to a teaching position at the University of the Philippines where he taught Art History, Photography and Installation. While there, he also served as a film critic and editor to several widely circulated newspapers and magazines and made two well-regarded anthropological documentaries. After returning to the United States, he completed a Masters at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and later worked as a designer and programmer at the digital studio R/GA Interactive. From 2006-2020, he led interactive graphics teams at The Wall Street Journal as art director and technical director in New York and London, where his work garnered recognition from The Loeb Foundation, the Society of News Design, The Webby Awards, and The British Journalism Awards. His art has been exhibited in New York, London, San Francisco, Marfa, Texas, and Cebu City, Philippines.

Gus Albor (b.1948, Philippines) is a painter, sculptor and musician known for his minimalist abstraction works. He exhibited in major Museums and galleries internationally, including Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane,56th Venice Biennale; The Philippine Pavilion, Collateral Event, Palazzo Mora, Venice, Jewish Museum, New York, Singapore Art Museum,National Museum of the Philippines, Pacific Asia Museum, in Pasadena, California. Finally, Ayala Museum hosted an exhibition dedicated to his five decades within the art world by showing his 2018 Retrospective.

Joint Film Screening and Reading
17 September 2022
From 5:00 PM

Working with the legacies of colonization by both the Spanish and the British and its long-term consequences in the lives of the Filipino people , a Film Maker and Novelist talk about the importance of grounded archival research in their artistic production.

With readings by Candy Gourlay and Jill Damatac

Moderated by Candy Gourlay

The Film:

Ta Acorda Ba Tu El Filipinas?

(1 hr 22 minutes)

Ta Acorda Ba Tu El Filipinas? (Do You Remember the Philippines? ) Explores the traces of overlapping waves of globalization from the past and the present across the multiplicity of languages in the Philippines. Mixing tongues, time-frames and settings, the film intertwines the lives, struggles and memories of different speech communities: from the haunting voices recalling layers of history in the bustling district of Quiapo, Manila, to a camp for internally displaced persons in the Zamboanga province.

The Novel:

Elephant and Castle, a work-in-progress PhD thesis novel in 20 chapters, follows the story of a group of migrant Filipinos in London looking for an antique figurine, a relic from the British occupation of Manila in the 18th century. As they search, the novel reveals their lives and struggles in Duterte’s Philippines and as migrants in the UK after the Brexit vote. The novel enacts a defamiliarization of London; the city is narrated from the perspectives of migrant Filipinos. The novel will also examine the legacy of the British occupation of Manila in the 18th century. Overshadowed by almost three hundred years of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, the British occupation of Manila (1762 and 1764) left colonial legacies in both countries. Using archival research of this often misremembered event in Philippine history, the novel will attempt to unearth, explore, and perform these legacies.

The ARTISTS:

Sally Gutierrez Dewar

After graduating in Fine Arts from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Sally Gutierrez moved to Berlin, where she lived for some years developing her art work. In 1998 she moved to New York with a Fulbright scholarship and did a Masters in Media Studies at New York University. In 1999-2000 she received a grant by the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Programme and during the academic year 2000-2001 received the grant/residency by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council World Views in the 92nd floor of the Twin Towers.After her return to Madrid in 2001 she created the bilingual and non-competitive art teaching method Art & English with her sister, Gabriela Gutierrez Dewar, with whom she also co-directs short documentaries. At the present moment she continues to spend part of the year in Berlin and travels often to New York. Sally Gutierrez has participated in numerous exhibitions, both in Europe and in the USA. Here videos have been screened in many video and film festivals. She has taught at the New School University and the Colegio Alemán de Madrid, and has led various workshops on Art & English. She has spoken about her work in seminars and conferences.

Rogelio Braga

Rogelio Braga is an exiled playwright, novelist, publisher, academic, and a human rights activist from the Philippines. Elephant and Castle is the creative component required for the completion of their degree in PhD English and Humanities at the School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London under the supervision of Luke Williams (Echo Chambers, Diego Garcia with Natasha Soobramanien). Their research project ‘Migration Stories: The Narratives of Filipino Migrants in London’ documents, explores, and then performs in a full-length novel the migration narratives of diasporic nationalist identity formation. Braga has presented papers on topics from nationalism, ethnic conflicts in Southeast Asia, and literary criticisms in universities in Berlin, Manila, London, Jogjakarta, Tokyo, and Bangkok. Their play Miss Philippines (New Earth Theatre) was recently awarded by Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s in their New Play Commission Scheme (NPCS). Their book of story Is There Rush Hour in a Third World Country? (translated by Kristine Ong Muslim) will be released in December by the radical South London Press, The87Press. Braga currently lives and writes in London as a refugee under the Convention.

Candy Gourlay

Candy Gourlay was born in the Philippines, grew up under the Marcos dictatorship and met her husband during the People Power revolution. Her novel Bone Talk, set during the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Costa Prize. The sequel will be published next year, transporting her indigenous characters to the St Louis World Fair of 1904. She has written a range of award-winning books – from older teen readers to early years. Her first novel Tall Story won the National Children’s Book Award of the Philippines and was listed in the 100 Best Books of the Last 100 Years by Booktrust, the UK’s largest reading charity.

Jill Damatac

Jill Damatac is a writer, filmmaker, and scholar. Of Ifugao and Kapampangan descent, she was born in Manila and raised in the United States. Her work focuses on themes of migration, identity, indigeneity, and race. Her film “Blood + Ink (Dugo at Tinta)”, featured at DOC NYC and won Best Documentary at Kerry FIlm Festival. Jill’s upcoming book, “Dirty Kitchen”, a memoir of Filipino food, family, and 22 years as an undocumented immigrant in the US, publishes with Astra House Books in 2024. Jill holds an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge, where she is currently a PhD candidate studying contemporary Filipino American women’s and queer literatures