Raymundo Albano: Texts

RAYMUNDO ALBANO 2 TEXTS 3 RAYMUNDO ALBANO Editor: Patrick D. Flores Research Coordinators: Louise Anne M. Salas Carlos Quijon, Jr. Encoder: Erlinda M. Pabico Designer: Dino Brucelas Acknowledgement Fe Albano MacLean Ateneo de Manila University Cultural Center of the Philippines Lopez Museum and Library Judy Freya Sibayan Raymundo Albano Alice M. Esteves Texts Veronica Fuentes Huwaran Mapalarin Sinag Galora Cheska Gatpayat Introduction/5 Juan Martin Magsanoc Danilo O. Nataba Milagros Pasion Mercedita B. Servida Responding/10 Krista Tiglao Randel C. Urbano Cultural: Life Form/16 Curatorial: Sense Scape/24 Critical: Thought Process/54 4 Creative: Make Believe/102 Asking/124 TEXTS “Roots, Basics, Beginnings” BY PATRICK D. FLORES To introduce the writing and the textual work quite akin to Michel Foucault’s “sudden vicinity of Raymundo Albano (1947-1985) is to sort of of things.” glide across terrains of “serious games.” Serious because Albano ponders. But he also plays a True to the spirit of Albano’s expositions, lot. Thus, the game of figuring out, challenging, this introduction will not be long-drawn, or contesting, losing, gaining, testing, teasing, “extenuate.” It keeps to the register and acuity baiting, biting. He does not seem to mind that of his improvisations on the essay, criticism, the thinking meanders, or that no thought think-piece, polemics and poetics, theoretical coheres. That being said, he, too, stakes certain tract, manual or memorandum, field notes, claims, and with conviction at that. He rolls journalism, diary. To weave in and out of the dice, makes his moves, and leaps into the these circuits of rhetoric and reflection is an “unthought known” of Mieke Bal. You might achievement in itself. So few have been able want to call it his gambit, but for him, it is by to mingle all these pursuits and at the same constantly paving paths, following through time direct a museum, create art, write poetry, efforts, and building on frameworks that an art present papers internationally, and attend context may be able to animate itself, to achieve, to other errands besides. According to one in his words, “style.” In Albano’s agenda, “roots, account in the eighties, one of those loose-leaf basics, beginnings” (taken from an eponymous ephemeral materials in the archive, Albano, exhibition in 1977) matter, and primarily in spite of his administrative tasks, “manages because they constitute the material through to paint regularly (‘evenings’) and in quantity which process or method takes place. Whatever (‘possibly more than what a dozing painter has’) may be inferred or alluded to or implicated and with marked development (‘I just keep my emerges from these: lineage, rudiment, origin. theories sharpened’). To develop this technique Whether critique comes in to complicate or and for research, he makes posters (‘hangover relations intervene, the “intelligence” of the from printmaking days’), designs sets for material cannot be severed from the “integrity” Bulwagang Gantimpala, conducts workshops of the lifeworld from which it is generated and (‘to interact with people’), and is in constant through which such lifeworld is reinvested. travel (‘through streets where one can discover Some would call this “context,” others would things that appear new’).” One watershed in say it is “impulse” or “urge.” Whatever it is that Albano’s career was his participation at the may be brought to our attentiveness as that Ninth International Biennial Exhibition of which excites what we broadly reference as art, Prints in Tokyo, an exhibition that was held in it should, in the imagination of Albano, stir up 1974-1975 at the National Museum of Modern a world “suddenly turning visible,” a condition Art in Tokyo and Kyoto. He sent three entries, 5 RAYMUNDO ALBANO and Step on the Sand and Make Footprints This command shows in the way he frames a (1974) was conferred an Honorable Mention situation—eliciting drama in the ordinary, as by an international jury of which Emmanuel painting would seize upon an insight, stark Torres was a member. In an interview for with tension. Drawn to nuance, Albano secures Sunburst (March 1975 on page 8), he confides: poetic lines taut with details, the world of things “I just sent them a blueprint, a piece of paper beheld in suspended animation—mirrors in a with instructions to spread enough sand for dressing room, walls of lime, egrets and rain, four people to step on. It was the only floor people and crickets, or even the remnants of piece on the show. They said it qualified because a lovers’ quarrel. His poetry lets loose howls a foot print is…a print.” According to him, an of music, too, as the undergirding tempo of Italian critic raved: “The print goes back to the revelation, pulsing with fear, tenderness, or primitive in man. The first print man made was cerebral calibration. Quite importantly, concept of his own body. A catalyst for the imagination.” emerges from his verse through patterns, for the And that “a joke can win.” examined life gains dimension through fleeting symmetries perceived in broken vigils. This This anthology addresses the concerns of is the sensible effort of both poet and painter, Albano in the intersecting fields of the creative, discerning shades of a single color or depths of the critical, the cultural, and the curatorial. It a solid substance, the refinement of perception is to these that Albano speaks: the discourse rendered as personal triumph.” and practice of art making and instilling it with presence in the world of ideas, exhibitions, and Albano never stayed overseas for a long time to the particularities of lived life that is oftentimes pursue studies. It was only in the late seventies captured in the category of “culture.” This is the when he went to the University of the Pacific ecology of his generous writing, its province. in Stockton in California to fulfill a grant And it is a robust ecology, something that as artist-in-residence. He became director/ Albano, born in Bacarra in Ilocos Norte, had curator of the museum spaces at the Cultural learned quite early in life. His sister Fe Albano Center of the Philippines around 1970 when MacLean relates that while Albano was in grade Roberto Chabet left seemingly in haste. While school, he would design pillow cases for his at the Center, aside from making art (painting, aunt to sew. He would also make lanterns and print, photography, performance, poetry), he decorate floats for Easter. In the late fifties, he planned, curated, and wrote about the different began to pursue writing when he was in high projects for the diverse programs of the space. school in San Sebastian College in Mendiola, In 1974, for instance, as director of the Museum where he was involved with the school organ, department, he oversaw the following: after which he took up English at the Ateneo de Manila University and contributed to the 1. The collections of Arturo de Santos and literary journal Heights. This anthology includes Potenciano Badillo. The de Santos collection some of his poems. It is worth noting that many consisted of archaeological pieces from trade of the germinal modernists and interlocutors ware to glass beads. The Badillo trove was of modernism in Philippine art history wrote largely built around the Islamic heritage, poetry like Aurelio Alvero, Hernando R. specifically of Maranao and Maguindanao Ocampo, and David Medalla. According to lineage, to include musical instruments, the poet and literary critic D.M. Reyes in an weapons, and brass ware. unpublished text: “With certainty, the poet Emmanuel S. Torres has listed Raymundo R. 2. The Main Gallery that presented Albano as a voice worth the renewed attention retrospectives, surveys, and large exhibitions. in the lyrical traditions of the Ateneo de Manila. His poetry pursues a style at once 3. The Small Art Gallery that hosted abstractive and pictorial—not as posture but as experimental exhibitions. fluent assertion of a fully achieved sensibility. 6 TEXTS 4. The End Room, which was at the end part so we leave it for later. It might, however, be of the Main Gallery, that became a space for germane to say at this point that Albano, while experimental chamber theater for “abstract keen to interact with the contemporary art theater pieces and hyper-realistic dramas.” world whirling around him, was in touch as well with the wisdom of Philippine modernists 5. The Thirteen Artists Program, a grant-giving like Hernando R. Ocampo and his superior at scheme to artists engaged in innovative work. the Center, the musical artist and musicologist Lucrecia Kasilag. It should be instructive to Over and above these, Albano initiated study how Ocampo, Kasilag, and Albano publications like the Philippine Art Supplement conceptualized the “Philippine” in relation and Marks; a program for the regions to the nationalism, the nativism, and the outside Manila like Los Baños and Baguio; avant-garde around them. In this regard, we and platforms for the image like “Carousel” look forward to recovering and reading the (a slide-show project) and the exhibition manuscript titled “Things Change.” Otherwise Photography. It is clear that Albano’s inclination was outward in terms of extending This anthology begins and ends with Albano the prospects of form and engagement. The speaking, not really writing. First, he responds “outside” of the Center meant the art market, to questions posed by the art critic and artist too, or any other entry point into the public. Cid Reyes. Then, he interviews Fernando In fact, Albano was the curator of the early Zobel. Alongside his texts are some of his projects of the art gallery that would later poster designs and the documentation of his be known as Finale Art File in the eighties, installations as a curator at the Center.

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