The heritage park Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar takes on an ethereal quality as soon as the sun sets over the Umagol River. At night, the meticulously restored heritage homes, relocated from all over the country up to its beachside slice of Bagac, Bataan glow, lit by incandescent street lamps and chandeliers through capiz windows. In the middle of it all is the unfinished Sanctuario de San Jose, a stark contrast with its exposed marble skeleton.
Inside, a floor-to-ceiling, black-and-white film projection depicts an immense column of seawater bubbling up to the skies like a mushroom. The space swells with the surround-sound boom of detonated atomic bombs. The year is 1946 in a lagoon at Bikini Atoll, and the declassified archival footage is “Code Name: Operation Crossroads,” the first nuclear weapons test by the United States Navy. The second world war just ended and this was the American leaders’ showcase of national security. Spliced and manipulated by the artist Bruce Conner into film in “Crossroads” (1976), the next 36 minutes of extreme slow-motion goes from ominous to terrifying — and devastatingly beautiful. The booms turn into music, the first half a bracing, percussion composed by Patrick Gleason progressing into a more mellow second half by Terry Riley, his Indian music influences conveying peacefulness, even relief — the kind that passes when the chaos and fear has subsided and the dust settles. In the juxtaposed imagery, poisonous smoke looks like clouds on a sunny day. In one lingering frame, a cloud of smoke took the shape of a sky-high heart.
(Left)“Crossroads” by Bruce Conner in Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar's Sanctuario de San Jose. (Right) “Chapel” by Not Vital
“When I think of creation, destruction, transformation, and out-of-body experience, I can’t help but think of the incredible potential in humanity’s power to create and what is possible to be built in this many lifetimes. We can harness the exact same energy that it takes to destroy something. To forget history condemns us to a cycle of repeating it,” says Bellas Artes Projects artistic director Diana Campbell Betancourt who curated “Bruce Conner: Out of Body,” the first presentation of the American artist in Southeast Asia. The non-profit art foundation are the custodians of Conner’s work in its headquarters in Casa Quiapo in Las Casas and in its outpost in Makati featuring films (like the Toni Basil-starred “Breakaway” and the Riley-scored “Easter Morning”) and works of several of his aliases that draw on spirituality.
In the ground floor of the BAP headquarters is resident Cian Dayrit’s “Busis Ibat Ha Kanayunan (Voices from the Hinterlands),” a mixed media exhibition focused on the history and mythology of Bataan’s 18 Aeta communities featuring sculptures of characters within the colonial history of Bataan, a map of the land and a timeline of its history as described by the Aetas themselves, as well as an amassed small collection of books “meant to go back to Bataan’s Aeta community,” Dayrit says. “One of the problems of the academe is what is written in the academe stays in the academe.” Facing the entrance is an installation, "Palyon Noon, Ngayon at Mamaya," which appears like what a Catholic home would have as an altar where consecrated holy figures are placed in a pedestal with flowers and prayers. Instead, it has bowls filled with coins, garlands of amputated thumbs alongside Aeta pottery.
(Left)“Palyon Noon, Ngayon at Mamaya” from Busis Ibat Ha Kanayunan by Cian Dayrit. (Right) A cast made from the hands of two nuns from “Nazareno: Quiapo Constellations” by Pawel Althamer
Paraphrasing one of their upcoming residents, Bellas Artes Projects founder Jam Acuzar says, “Bataan always has a part of the world coming to an end.” We are now facing the Swiss artist Not Vital’s “Chapel,” rising high on farmland over a hill in Saysain, built through the patronage of BAP in 2015. “Chapel” is one of Vital’s structures built on remote sites around the world (other notable structures are in Tschlin, Switzerland and Agadez, Nigeria). The journey upwards, whether by foot or by a rented jeepney through a forest, feels like a pilgrimage. The trapezoid prism built from exposed concrete interacting with the natural landscape of horses grazing on the windswept grounds overlooking the Peninsula as it mirrors the sunset sky is surreal. From above the bleachers on its side, Acuzar points my attention to my right where the Bataan Power Plant is in clear, ominous view. Completed in 1984, the risky structure is being brought up again to supplement the nation’s power supply shortage. I say a little prayer that it never opens.
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Screening of “Crossroads” (1976) resumes this weekend from 7 to 9 p.m. until June 3 at Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar. “Bruce Conner: Out of Body” is on view at Bellas Artes Outpost, The Alley at Karrivin, Makati.