To start us off, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and the type of artwork you do? Words, Sound, Pictures?

I’d like to call myself a storyteller using different art forms. I’m a filmmaker, a media artist, and a writer. Lately, I have been doing documentary films often collaborating with a German filmmaker Manuel Domes. We just released a long form documentary film in 2020 entitled A House in Pieces. But on my own, I also do video art pieces. I’ve been currently dabbling with experimental video essays. My visual practice focuses on photography and video. For photography, I usually do documentary photography works because I find that it allows for long form storytelling possibilities.

In the past, I have finished some sound art/ soundscape pieces but I haven’t quite found the right platform to show them yet. I’ve done one that was shown once. But I’d like to explore that form in the future and even in this residency. I was first trained as a creative writer in my undergraduate days so I’ve published some poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction pieces in the previous years. These days though, I’m more focused on writing screenplays.

What do you love most about ‘camera’? What makes a good story?

Susan Sontag once said that to take pictures is to collect the world. I actually subscribe to this statement. It doesn’t apply only for photography but also for video and film as well. That’s the good thing that a camera affords. It’s like falling in love with the world once you peer into the viewfinder, choose the subject, then click the shutter button. The collection starts from there. And along with that is really a beginning of telling a narrative. Everything that is framed by a camera contributes to narrative. I find that very powerful.

I think a good story should first successfully engage the viewer or reader or listener in whatever ways it was intended to do so. A work of art is never complete in its meaning-making without an audience. I also think that a good story must have a clear message, something important to say or comment on. Many stories have retained their timelessness even if they are commenting on a specific social/historical/political-economic context of the time because they resonate universally as a commentary also about humanity.

Guide us through your creative process. How important is to engage with the community and get to know all the individual stories?

When doing a documentary project, it is really important for me to engage with the community. Getting to know my subjects’ individual stories and how these stories can be told in the context of their community is very important. I usually start with research first when I do pre-production. That’s part of my story development, which takes a long time before I can move to the production phase. Really immersing in the community is very important for me.

My creative process involves starting with conceptualization. I read a lot of sources before I conceptualize a video artwork or even a film. Because I am also a writer, words are important to me. My video pieces are different from my documentary or narrative films because they are more internal explorations of the self. The common aspect between my video work and my filmmaking is that both of these are always grounded on a questioning of social and historical issues, notions of migration and displacement, and fluid identities.

I always look to theoretical sources to inform my work. I’d like to think that my foundation is really philosophical based on critical theory, cultural studies, and other fields.

What was the main inspiration and starting point behind your project, Stories Beyond?

I started Stories Beyond in 2016 because I wanted to tell stories of marginalized communities that don’t use a victimization lens, and that don’t treat these communities as spectacles of tragedy. Most of the media work about these communities focus on tragic stories but a few tell stories of hope, resilience, and the power of these communities to strive to restore their lives after disaster, conflict, or even structural violence like poverty. I want to put a human face to these issues. The restorative narrative framework aims to focus on sustained inquiry and long form pieces. Stories Beyond is dedicated to telling restorative and transformative narratives of communities beyond the single story. The use of the term “single story” is inspired by Chinmanda Adiche’s observation that most stories of communities often just focus on one aspect, and that aspect becomes the single story of the community that are replicated in many platforms forming a stereotype of the community. I want to go beyond that single story and offer different narratives that reflect the community despite the sufferings that often represent them in mainstream media.

To what extent has your everyday life as an artist changed during pandemics?

It has changed immensely in so many aspects. Before the pandemic, I am able to go out to the field and shoot and not worry about getting sick. When the pandemic started, I suffered a lot of anxieties about getting the virus because at that time there was little information that came out about it. So when the lockdown happened in my country, I immediately isolated myself in my apartment in another town in the Philippines and didn’t go out for days. My coping mechanism was just to constantly watch movies and TV shows on various streaming platforms. For almost a year, I was not productive. But this year, I moved back to my hometown, and I decided to go back to artmaking, whatever it takes, because it is what keeps me sane.

What also keeps my sanity is being able to travel outside the country because that is how I collect experiences and observations and even inspirations that would inform my art. But unfortunately, I’m not sure if that will happen soon.

How do you feel about being involved in an online residency program? How important is to stay connected with the international art community?

When I got accepted to the Belgrade Art Studio Online Residency, I was honestly ecstatic. As I mentioned above, I decided to create more art this year despite the limitations that the pandemic created. And that is why I sought out an online residency that would help or even force me to keep being creative. It is very important for me to be connected to an international art community as well. During the lockdowns, I constantly had to go on video chats with my friends who are filmmakers, artists, and curators all over the world. But they were also busy with dealing with the shock of the pandemic. So it wasn’t really as productive as I wanted it to be. But in a residency, I am able to meet new people, artists who do various creative practices, and I find that very exciting. I am very glad that I met such amazing women in this residency. They inspire me so much. And I love how this group of women artists is so supportive and nurturing. I am looking forward to collaborating with one of them in the future.

What are your thoughts about the theme ‘artist on standby’? Tell us a bit more about your project…

I see the theme ‘artist on standby’ as a very interesting provocation because indeed as per my experience, I am constantly on standby. I suddenly thought of Turner’s ideas of liminality and I wanted to extend his ideas and relate it to my own experience. I see being on standby as being in a liminal space. Liminal being of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process, occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

I have two projects that are works-in-progress for this residency. The video work I’m creating will explore liminality in relation to virtual spaces. Liminal spaces don’t have to be physical for me. The virtual space can also be  liminal. Because I am constantly communicating online and doing work online these days, I am also constantly in the liminal space of the virtual. I will explore boundaries and thresholds and being in-between and how I react and engage with these spaces and beings, that sometimes translate isolation to entanglements. That’s how I can explain it for now. I’m pretty sure this project will transform in the following days.

My second project that I’d like to dabble in as a work-in-progress is a sound art piece. I found photos of ruined buildings that are traces of the NATO bombings of Belgrade. If I were to imagine being there now for the artist residency, these will be the places I would go to because I am very interested in war/conflict history, and how they form layers of meanings that shape a place. I converted the photos into sound files using software. Then I will mix the sound files into one sound art piece. Let’s see where this will lead me.

What do you want to achieve before things return to normal?

I want to be able to create more work this year and the next. I wish to be able to settle in a certain rhythm that is stable enough to allow me to create. I guess I have slowly accepted the fact that this is the “new normal” for the moment. So being able to adjust to that is already an achievement.

Any future plans/projects?

There are a few projects in the works. I just got accepted into the Connecting Stories program of the Scottish Documentary Institute to develop the story of a new documentary film project. My initiative Stories Beyond (stories-beyond.com) will continue to operate in terms of producing more stories about communities. We are hoping to be able to do fieldwork by working within the health protocols set for creatives and film crews in the country.

I also have an upcoming commissioned work for an exhibition in the Philippines for which I’m planning to do a video installation. I plan to continue applying to more online residencies this year because as I have mentioned, having a structured program forces, or let’s say encourages me to keep creating.