Out of 324 proposals from the creative industry, design and artistic practitioners, and Benilde student hopefuls for the Benilde Open Design + Art 2024, only 10 made the cut.
The open invitation to all was an opportunity for unfulfilled ideas, projects and dreams to come true. It was a pioneering, noble and visionary initiative of the De La Salle College of Saint Benilde in synergy with the Embassy of Switzerland and in time for its 35-year anniversary celebration.
Benilde Open selected 10 proposals, each to receive a grant of P300,000 for the visions to be realized. In addition, one special mention received full funding from a private donor in the amount of P300,000.
Exhibitions of the selected proposals are open to the public until 30 June at several spaces in De La Salle College of Saint Benilde — Design + Arts Campus, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila and Hub for Innovation.
Here we present, in two parts, the 10 grantees that created an impact, a statement, a lightbulb moment, an insight, a narrative and a possibility that’s now a reality.
‘TROPIKALYE’
Tropikalye by Nice Buenaventura and Costantino Zicarelli is an online index of photographs and text highlighting the accidental intersections of contemporary Philippine aesthetics and the everyday from the vantage point of the street. It is a portmanteau of the words “tropical” and the Tagalized Spanish word for street, “kalye.” A popular trend in the index, color-cooling, is the use of mint green on architectural and related surfaces — cool on the eyes, or “malamig sa mata.”
‘NIGHTINGALES’
Nightingales by RJ Fernandez acknowledges the presence of Filipinos in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. Filipinos are the third largest nationality employed by the UK’s health service with over 40,000 and more in the private health sector. Eighty-five percent of nurses trained in the Philippines work overseas.
The filmmaker engages and collaborates with three Filipino nurses from East Sussex through an observational documentary video that shows their daily life, as well their horticultural activities as they learn to grow food in a community garden.
The nurses will be given technical training in video documentation and given 10 to 12 days to document their daily life. Like many Asians in the diaspora, food is the strongest and most accessible form of our culture. It connects us to other cultures through sharing. By having creative activities that revolve around food, through growing vegetables, cooking and sharing a meal with the community, these activities are ways of welcoming a demographic that have not historically engaged with the arts. Nightingale is titled after the pledge, named after Florence. It is a modern version of the Hippocratic oath taken by nurses and doctors.
‘STAKEHOLDING’
Stakeholding: Chapter 1, A Developing Tabletop Game by Lyra Garcellano, explores the various features of the contemporary art and culture world. It involves the players making fun, easy and occasionally complex decisions in hypothetical scenarios.
The game proposes discussions and conversations that take off from philosophical queries, such as: How do we design a new art world? How can we chart our journey? How can we be mobile in that path? What do we do when we collide with other worlds/communities — do we occupy and conquer or do we cooperate and collaborate?
‘RE-MOVE’
RE-MOVE: Unraveling truths behind the spectacle of indigenous exposition through the contemporary performance lens by Aaron Kaiser Garcia, retraces the history of the Filipino body all the way back to the first Human Zoo.
The Filipino body holds centuries-worth of stories about resistance and triumph against colonial oppression and exploitation. As time passes, memories fail — yet oftentimes, the body remembers.
The project aims to highlight how colonial infrastructures remove cultural artifacts from our indigenous communities; and in response to this removal, we aim to recreate, reimagine, and
re-move our bodies to shine a light on this spectacle of indigenous exposition and exploitation.
‘TAUSUG WEAVING’
Exploring the Use of Philippine Silk in Tausug Pisyabit Weaving by Rambie Lim proposes to bridge the gap between suppliers, dyers and weavers to possibly bring about the renaissance of traditional Tausug textiles by working with weavers from Padirna Sanaani of Parang, Sulu and Ruhina Muhaimer of Maimbung, Sulu.
Tausug weavers used silk threads from Chinese traders as early as the 15th century creating textiles for traditional clothing like the pis (men’s headscarf), kambut (stole belt) and the turung (shawl or shoulder coverings).
Through the passage of time, the island’s long conflict, and the changes of trade — imported silk threads are no longer available and weavers use acrylic and polyester threads from Jolo’s Textile Market. Through the Rurungan Sa Tubod Foundation, the designer has been researching and experimenting on how to adapt traditional weaving and dying techniques to find solutions.