Artist interviews showcased in audio-video collection

Filipino contemporary artist Poklong Anading presents a collection of unrealized and abandoned ideas in #AVoidWork, a project wherein the concept of sharing becomes the collaborative video.

#AVoidWork showcases Anading’s interviews with key individuals in artist-run initiatives and self-organized models, where scarcity and collaboration shape both ideas and their afterlives. This includes Surrounded by Water, Big Sky Mind, Green Papaya, Junk Shop, Future Prospects, Lost Frames, Spare Bedroom, Art School Now Salon, Golden Cargo Gallery, Bastards of Misrepresentation and the Museum of Mental Objects. Some conventions continue to unfold.

“In the late 1990s and early 2000s Manila, artist-run spaces thrived as vital platforms for contemporary art, and I came into this ecosystem in the late 1990s as an exhibiting artist,” Anading recalled.

It was first showcased through the Museum of Modern Art’s post: C-MAP Asia and the Ctrl+P Biennale. The ongoing iteration will be screened this month as part of MCADxMoving Image, a program of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde.

MCADxMoving Image looks at culture, society and politics through the media of the moving image — from hybrid documentaries and video essays to narrative experiments, filmed performances and archival audio-video works.

“Each entry begins with a recorded narration from the artist, which I combine with edited visuals drawn from the visit, the immediate environment and sourced materials,” he expounded.

“Many of the proposals speak to sustaining spaces, programs they hoped to build and concepts that surfaced through transitions, including moments of pause or closure,” he added.

Known for his pieces that investigate travel and photography, Anading is fascinated with the process of creation and permutation. He further explores different mediums with a range of sociopolitical and environmental questions.

Having begun his career as a painter, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Studio Arts, Painting) Degree from the University of the Philippines in 1999. Rather than working with an overt agenda, he approaches material transformation as a method of inquiry, thinking with and through his materials as they shift in form and meaning.

Anading frequently uses found objects and discarded items to investigate notions of worth and value, and even to explore what it means for art to exist inside and beyond capitalist production.

#AVoidWork will be on view from 28 to 30 January at noon at the Ideation Room at The Atrium @ Benilde, 1040 Arellano Avenue corner Ayala Street, Malate, Manila.