Mark Louie Lugue
Conference Report. November 2023
Similar to what was presented about Brazil, fires can be considered common in the university where I work in the Philippines. In fact, I was in some way greeted by one. Four days after I physically handed over my application for my graduate degree in art studies, the faculty and administrative building of various units, including what would be my home department, were ravaged by a blaze, turning to ashes thousands of books, manuscripts, historical references, academic and administrative records, paintings, musical instruments, memorabilia, and other cultural objects, whose significance dwarfs by comparison my application that burned with them.
The building, called the Faculty Center or Bulwagang Rizal, was, legislatively, a piece of national heritage as it was erected in the 1960s, although it was only in the weeks that came after it burned down that I witnessed the gravity of that to its immediate community. More than two hundred affected faculty members – coming from disciplines like history, art studies, anthropology, comparative literature, theater arts, and the like – took their time to let their personal and disciplinal loss sink in. Two exhibitions, led by my department’s curatorship courses, were mounted to reflect upon the significance of the space, not only in terms of the physical objects therein but also the memories and experiences that were lost alongside the place. Through the help of various art institutions across the country that donated books and furniture, our department was able to start rebuilding its library and administrative office. In this case, care was not borne out only by ownership (a common idea in heritage studies); it was brought about by connectedness and solidarity.
This resonance is why I found Pablo Lafuente’s presentation compelling. He took off from an experience of destruction and ruin and reflected on the structural conditions enveloping museums and other cultural institutions that led to such and the role of a museum worker and leader in this ecology. Connected to the question of “What happens if an institution collapses?” that he posed earlier, he shared how the varied people of Brazil actively called for the museum’s reconstruction after the disaster that destroyed part of their heritage. The same was felt for the Faculty Center.
As a means to mitigate risks, the administration endeavored to retrofit the university’s main library, which is at a high risk from fire. An affiliated memory institution, the Bulwagan ng Dangal University Heritage Museum, in which I recently started working, is in the same building. The physical space of the Bulwagan has not been accessible since the effort started, and due to government bureaucracies and contractual delays common in my country, it has been almost half a decade already. Although the museum has tried to continue pursuing its vision by using platforms beyond a dedicated physical exhibition space – such as virtual and off-site exhibitions and a focus on collections management – its presence has been different, ever since. And “different” does not always have to mean “less” there. The Conference posed the challenge of purposively reflecting on this period of temporary displacement on how we can imagine our museum beyond the physical space and possibly more as a network of relations.
Relevant to this, Lafuente’s question of “who would be calling for our return?” strikes a chord. Placing the Faculty Center and the Bulwagan alongside each other, one sees how ‘absence,’ if not loss, is an opportunity to gauge how much we were able to touch lives, and how much we mattered to our communities. This period of “absence” is an opportune moment to reflect (again) on questions that can steer the museum forward. Who have we touched and who have we not? How and why so? How can the museum also be a shared creation with communities within campus, which are usually considered ‘transitory’ or ‘invisible’? Upon our return to a physical space, how do we (re)introduce the institution to the university community, whose large population has not really seen its physical manifestation? How would art and a physical exhibition space act as pivotal in this endeavor?
The attitude of care in this line of questioning is central to the presentations at the conference, although articulated in different ways. Elvira Espejo Ayca spoke about mutual nurturing with one’s communities. Daina Leyton and teresa cisneros forwarded accessibility and diversity. Marian Pastor Roces nuanced care through the metaphor of suturing wounds, while Simon Njami cautions us about extraction. But returning to Lafuente, the notion of “maintenance” he evoked speaks of the continuity of this attitude of care in small day-to-day gestures and actions. To my mind, attention to the “small” highlights the day-to-day experiences in the Faculty Center, which through time accumulated into the layers of significance it has now, that urge people to call for its return after the fire.
Bio
I teach art history at the Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD), handling undergraduate courses on modern art, perspectives in art history, and humanities. I completed my graduate degree in art history in the same institution, where I wrote a thesis on selected practices of abstraction during the 1970s, surfacing untapped narratives on this stream of practices deemed to have been coopted by the dictatorial regime then, as a means to argue for their vitality and to elaborate on the concept of the “continuing modern.” I continue to write modern art histories, extending the thesis further, using previously untapped or rarely discussed angles, such as spirituality, eco-eschatology, Zen Buddhism, and outer space.
Alongside this, I have a broad curatorial practice spanning collections management, exhibition making, audience development programming, and cultural heritage work not only with the university where I teach, but also in various national cultural agencies, local government units in the regions, and non-profit institutions. Across these, I am keen on exploring how art and heritage intersect.
I was part of a university-wide collections cataloging project, covering more than 2,200 products of creative expressions. Attempting to engage the critical discourse on art, craft, and design with collections management, we decided to cover not only the fine arts, but also ethnographic objects, philately, and heritage furniture. I also spearheaded the publication output of the project, producing a book on the university’s various collections that reflect on their artistic, historical, and pedagogical significance as parts of university heritage; and an exhaustive 35-volume digital catalog. Coming from this project, I have been tapped to continuously serve at the university’s de facto culture and arts office as the point person for researching on the collections to aid policy making, art commission processes, conservation and restoration efforts, and general management of the collections.
I was also part of various exhibition projects in various capacities (curator, co-curator, assistant curator). These include those at the Bulwagan ng Dangal University Heritage Museum of UPD: an exhibition on placemaking of the university community as expressed and problematized through various art forms—paintings, sculptures, editorial cartoons, videography, and installations; and exhibitions highlighting the traditions of critique and dissent of the community channeled through artistic means. Guided by the mandate of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, I also curated solo exhibitions of artists from Manila and the regions, who presented and questioned our changing relationships with cultural heritage. The curatorial bend of these exhibitions is informed by my experiences in conducting local participative heritage mapping in the regions, where I see first-hand how various local communities define and construct the heritage that they consider their own.
In addition, I manage, coordinate, and research for the educational video series of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, which features selected artworks from the institution’s collection that is known for its modern and experimental works spanning the post-War years. I also managed a series of talks and workshops at the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation, where art, research, and the archives were triangulated.
Starting this August, I am slated to serve as the Curator of the University Heritage Museum and its growing art collection. Keeping with my interest on the concept of art and heritage, and grounded on the mandate of the museum, I have been planning exhibitions and community research and archiving projects that aim to activate the collections within the university, to foster an environment that supports interdisciplinary endeavors and make space for them, and to tease out critical discourse on university heritage as it relates with the wider Philippine society.