DEPARTMENT OF STUDIO ARTS DEGREE SHOW 2016
Quiet Punctuations
Seminar Room 1, Albert Hall
Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines, Diliman
25 May — 4 June 2016A feeling that some things ought not to be, or to have been; a sense of loss of something prized--the privacy and serenity of my neighborhood, now just a memory of a time gone by. This, in essence, is the feeling of dysfunction that pervades our village, a private residential community whose quality of life has been eroded by unregulated urbanization.
The installation is a work that depicts everyday life in the vanishing landscape and soundscape of a residential community in the city using the ethnographic approach. The work includes a video comprised of a montage of busy, chaotic scenes punctuated by quiet, restful shots. Its sound track assaults the ear, an insistent reminder of one's nearly futile efforts at creating a sanctuary amid a highly urbanized environment.
The work ponders my own, as well as my community's, striving for order and other adaptive responses in the midst of the sense of dysfunction inherent in losing our village to the forces of urbanization. Just as endangered animal species lose their habitats and tribal minorities lose their ancestral lands and native cultures due to the encroachment of industrial activities, so residents in private residential villages like ours are losing our communities to the relentless push for commercialization.
photos courtesy of Abram Barrameda