EXHIBITIONS
Autoportraits
Areté
June 2019
Artinformal
October 2019
In Autoportraits, I revisit the notion of identity as a function of task, wherein an entity is defined by its own activities. What is an artist but an entity that makes art? Does the machine in the laboratory, when given agency (as its ouput {or, in this case, the sound it makes} is itself utilized as input) to create its own sound-image, become an artist? How is it different or no different from me, drawing the vibrations of my working hand for my exhibition Wave Drawing Nos. 11-12 (2017)?
A proper methodology, in pseudocode syntax, as though communicating with each artist-machine:
for <i> in <machines> {
if <i> = (makes a sound) {
machines.print(sound);
}
}
Questions that arise from a such-and-such proposition include, but are not limited to: concerns about the work of art in the age of computerized reproduction, concerns about individual vis-à-vis communal authorship, concerns about technology in the service of art and the nascent possibility of art in the service of technology.
It is an objective of the exhibition to present an ideal condition for innovation, incidentally recursive.
That the exhibition is produced in a laboratory is of note: one hopes to find answers.
Autoportraits is the artist’s culminating project for Materials Improvisation, a residency-format course at the Ateneo de Manila University’s ELJ Makerspace. In the same year, it was restaged at Artinformal.
With special thanks to Jason Dy, SJ, Tina Fernandez and Koki Lee.
