CNN Philippines Life
SPOTLIGHT: THE ARTISTS IN RESIDENCY AND THEIR EXHIBITED PROJECTS AT ART FAIR PHILIPPINES 2023
JAMES TANA
A dance major graduate of the Philippine High School for the Arts in Los Baños in Laguna, performance-maker Aaron Kaiser Garcia embarks on a spiritual and experiential journey for his residency under Emerging Islands in La Uñion.
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Garcia is an alumnus of the Intercultural Theatre Institute in Singapore. He trained in different traditional dances and performances such as Philippine Folk Dance, Odissi, Chhau, Kuttiyatam, Beijing Opera, Wayang Wong, and Noh Theatre.
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Opting to explore the idea of “archipelagic thinking” in relation to the island’s inhabitants, geography, and history, Garcia collaborated with fellow artists and creatives: Genavee Lazaro, Jao San Pedro, JD Yu, Joar Songcuya, Kristone Capistrano, and Wendell Garcia. The performed “collaborative rituals” as Garcia would call it, manifested in the form of ceramics, paintings, objects, sound, and photography which will be showcased in the exhibit.
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He says, “The process started by meeting and observing different indigenous communities in San Gabriel, La Union, and Baguio City, Benguet… I endeavored to cast a larger web of belonging and solidarity with peoples and ecologies, to tell a more empathic story that included rather than separated, the vast ecological realities of a surf town sandwiched between the mountains and the seas.”
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According to Garcia, their collaboration “is an attempt to position dance and performance (as folk in my practice) as a starting point for the creation of a countermyth set in La Uñion.”
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2018 in Philippine Art
Cristian Tablazon
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Initially produced as a senior thesis at the Philippine High School for the Arts staged in March at the National Arts Center this year, “Dakel Saday” debuted as a solo performance in Baler, Aurora as part of the one-day group exhibition “Littoral Drifts.” Performance artist, dancer, and choreographer Aaron Kaiser Garcia’s hybrid project of ethnochoreography builds on the Tasaday hoax of the Marcos regime and the many choreographic fabrications by dance scholars passed as ethnographic notation to be later canonized into our dance traditions. Garcia’s project commemorates and critically reimagines the controversial Tasaday people while doubling as a work of fabulation and counterdocument to problematize myths of authenticity and ‘nation’ and the role of cultural production in assisting state power.
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Through this work, he asks: “How much of the narratives in our history have been fabricated and false? How come the remains of a former dictator now lies in a graveyard reserved for heroes? What influence have artist-choreographers contributed to such insidious fictions and assisted the state machinery over the decades?” Rarely does one encounter a rigorous project that wields choreography and dance as tools of critical discourse, not to mention the commanding intelligence of Garcia’s body and the utter sorcery of his movements as he blazed the ground barefoot.
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https://www.cnnphilippines.com/life/culture/arts/2018/12/31/art-2018.html