A deep space adventure

It all started with an e-mail just after New Year’s. After seeing my work together with other Filipino visual artists, AIT (Arts Initiative Tokyo) invited me over to do an artist residency in Tokyo – complete with a nice apartment, equipment, exhibition budget and daily allowance. AIT is a contemporary art platform, which creates a range of programs and events in Tokyo, from artist talks and workshops to exhibitions, publications and club nights. As art and its contexts change, it is necessary to mould new platforms for art whereby increasing complexity and diversity can be maintained. Contemporary art spaces and organizations in Manila could learn from AIT and create similar initiatives for art to remain relevant not only locally, but beyond.

For the show in Tokyo, I converted the space at AIT into a studio/squat – opening it for two weeks straight whereby people can view the process of art making, rather than just looking at the finished artwork on opening day. On the closing night, I did a performance-installation entitled "Disaster But Disco." Below are excerpts from a conversation with AIT curator Roger McDonald, parts of which will appear in the exhibition catalog. The show will also be featured in international publications such as Dazed and Confused Magazine and Art-Asia Pacific.

ROGER MC DONALD: Firstly, what is the meaning of "Disaster but Disco"? Disco implies a place of colorful lights and pleasure, but it is offset with disaster?

YASON BANAL: Disaster But Disco is the dangerous and relentless drive to seek awkward pleasures and resistances despite errors and terrors. Both Tokyo and Manila possess this drive to go on and continue amid tragedy – surviving disasters both natural and manmade such as earthquakes, recessions and the atomic bomb. Disaster But Disco also stands for DBD, which in Filipino parlance alludes to pirated movies sold on the black market. I am interested in music and film cultures, and how they can be used to reflect and deflect existing forms and narratives, and hopefully create new constellations in the process.

I understand that this installation and performance is inspired by a number of different elements – the Great Earthquake of 1923 in Tokyo, constellations, your interest in Death Metal music and the intense Catholic traditions in the Philippines. Can you explain a little about these elements and how have you woven these things together in this installation?

Disasters are said to be caused by the bad alignment of stars. Stars can mean both heavenly bodies in outer space or failed celebrities in media hell. Constellations are like disco lights. One bulb goes off and a dark disaster can happen, like tripping on the dance floor, or an earthquake destroying a city like Tokyo or Manila. Constellations are also formed by various bodies in space, forming various alignments. I see my work, including the AIT project, as another constellation formed by various ideas, each with a certain trajectory of its own, but hopefully all of them at sometime will meet at a certain point, and make sense to the viewer somehow, however nervous the alignments may seem.

I’ve become acquainted with black metal music two years ago when I did a show for the Oslo Kunsthall in Norway. I started hanging out with these guys for two months – boy were they full of angst and makeup. I found the mock scary attire hilarious, and discovered that they were actually thoughtful and fragile. The singer’s growling reminds me of earthquakes, as much as fault lines make me think of Sixties minimalism. The black metal makeup and get-up is a disaster, and is more disco than devil. Disasters, discos, jihads and metal concerts also cause mob hysteria, and cause agony and ecstasy at the same time. Philippine Christian pageantry in its ritual performance and visual design is a similar paradox, so I find that kind of surreal and subversive in a way. It has somehow effortlessly blended hardcore Catholicism with witchcraft, like a black metal gospel choir.

Can you explain a little about tonight’s performance element? What are the two half-naked tattooed men doing and what is your role in it?

The two guys in the performance resemble sculptures; they are not actors. Visually, the black strip of electric tape on their eyes and headphones on their ears are very similar to the "straight" guys you see appearing on amateur Japanese porn. I find this fascinating – the Japanese notion of honne (reality) and tatemae (agreed-upon appearance) – blocking out "disasters" and other disturbances to norm, and living in a sort of fantasy "disco" land. I think it’s also dangerous, because there is little acknowledgement or tolerance of certain deviations and ideas.

The black strip on the eye-line also remind me of visionaries in the Philippines, religious devotees who claim to have seen the Virgin Mary. In both cases, the focus is on the eyes – the epicenter of ecstasy and knowledge. Similarly, these porn actors and religious visionaries are amateurs and charlatans. The realities and apparitions they claim to see are fake, blocked by their own pathology.

My participation in the performance will move between various elements culled from different sources/ constellations, marked by my stenciling of tattoos on the two males bodies as well as small actions inspired by samurai, death metal, folk science and newscasting.

Why is everything black? It’s the color of many things – death and mourning, but also a sense of high fashion and minimalism. I noticed you have taped objects like umbrellas up in black tape and sprayed things black. It’s like you are pushing everything into a state of deep space?

Yes, deep space. Not just constellations in outer space but in sunny islands such as the Philippines. I’ve become interested in macho minimalism, as well as the notion of a "tropical gothic" – something I want to further develop formally. To explore the dark side of the "dancing sun" so to speak, and sunny, supposedly "happy" people and forms.

Another deep space that comes to mind is the beach. It’s a place for frolic and fun, but can also quite be quite menacing. I like the idea of how black waves devour/embrace all the colorful creatures and objects in its path. And it continues, the destruction and creation of patterns. There’s a certain horror to it, but also melancholy. Deep within the void/the disaster is a tropical island of colors and flavors, clashing but engaging nevertheless.

Finally, how has Tokyo been to live in? What have you found interesting, strange, wonderful?

Many things – people, places, music, the culture and of course the city. I like getting lost, and Tokyo is the perfect place to do that, discovering new unintended paths in the process. I feel normal here too, which is probably good for me these days. I wish I had more time though, language skills, resources and sleep. Hopefully next year when I come back I can get to relax more, see more and say more than "arigato" and "gomen nasai."

* * *

The author will join Donna Miranda, contemporary dancer and part of La’Bordage, in a conversation and slide show about their respective Tokyo adventures on July 14, 7 p.m. onwards at Green Papaya Projects, Maginhawa Street, UP Village. For details, e-mail yasonbanal@yahoo.co.uk. Admission is free.