On a balmy Saturday afternoon of August 23, a forum on gif art and internet art was held in conjunction with the show #Destroy 3000 Years of Culture which recent Ateneo Art Award winner Jeona Zoleta curated. Multi-media Arts and Fine Arts students from Kalayaan College, Mapua Institute of Technology and the UP College of Fine Arts came to hear about the discussion on this new art medium and platform that’s uniquely conceived out of this digital-media saturated generation. I do hope they’ve learned something from this discussion. Much thanks to teachers Ms. Drea Peralejo, Ms. Con Cabrera, and Ms. Teta Tulay for herding their students to this talk. Post and Pablo hope to conduct more forums like this in the future.

Artist Maria Cruz had an exhibit at CCP last June titled Psychology Today. She is wearing a shirt she bought from a gig by the indie band Young Liars who refashions 2nd -hand clothes.

Ringo Bunoan, co-curator of an upcoming homage show for Roberto Chabet at CCP this August 30, is also currently setting up a small bookshop that focuses on art books and locally published books with Katya Guerrero. Pow Martinez will be opening a show with Jeona Zoleta at Now Gallery this August 25.

a nourished body for a nourished mind : scrumptious home-baked treats from Pablo gallerist Osie Tiangco.

Jeona Zoleta giving an introduction to the talk, explaining how the show came about : the title of the show being taken from an Atari Teenage Riot Song (Destroy 2000 Years of Culture), and originally inviting mostly women artists she’s worked with from an earlier show she’s curated at Finale Art File (Y2K Babes), eventually she’s included some artists who prior to this show have not really made gif clips.

Alden Santiago explaining his work Remodern Guilt. He accepted the challenge of doing a gif for the first time for this show as he’s mostly doing installation work. Forgot to ask if the work references 2001 Space Odyssey in any way.

Kat Medina’s turn. She confessed that the work she did for the show may not be strictly considered a gif as its frame rate of 60 already borders on being an animation of 2 of her existing paintings. She also added that working with technology is somehow a form of craft practice.

Teta Tulay with her students from Kalayaan College, is also a core member of the Anino Shadowplay Collective, and a recipient of numerous recognition such as Gawad CCP para sa Alternatibong Pelikula at Video, Animation Council of the Phil. and PPBY for her works on animation and illustration.

Catalina Africa, back from her art residency from Maine, USA, explains how she came up with her own gif work, employing green screening techniques to her collage-paintings, and incorporating performance too.

Mark Sanchez narrates a rather funny anecdote about an asylum inmate who thinks he’s a casette tape (lying supine as side A, lying prone as side B) He relates this anecdote to his work where he translated an image of white noise into an ASCII code. Transcribing it manually, he correlates the physicality of this task as working in an analogue mode to get to a digital image.

Tanya Villanueva on her work – a compilation of found gifs on the internet. She’s part of a group show titled Hand Job which will be opening on Sept 4 at Galerie Anna.

illustrator, vinyl afficionado and part-time actor Fabo came to the talk with his whole brood who are all budding artists as well. Here, he shares his insights and concerns about this new media which seems to define as well the generation of today. The concern centers primarily on how this new media can be beneficially used further, and how it can bypass traditional platforms to present work.

Tatong Torres, who did an entire exhibition in the 3d virtual world platform Second Life and by which he was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards in 2011, raised questions on the technical aspects of mounting the show, and the essential differences between gifs and looped video works.

prepping up the performance tent for Jol3na, the performance duo of Jeona Zoleta and Catalina Africa

Post program director Manuel Ocampo with Paris-based Gaston Damag back in Manila for a series of shows with Drawing Room

that guitar is so fun to play, it comes with a very portable mini amp in black and white tiger stripes.

the peripheral performers : Mark playing a vibrating wooden instrument, a paparazzi dedicated on taking photos of Martin, Kat and Tanya dancing to the cacophony of Jol3na’s ambient instrumentations and Martin’s sing-chants.