How do we grow together?
I’m fairly convinced that “ecological” and “sustainability” have become recurring keywords across different disciplines and spaces. I see it everywhere: in the arts, non-profit initiatives, startups, government projects, and elsewhere. Last year, in my junior year of college, I spent an entire semester taking a class about sustainability.
Of course, it’s easy to think of them as mere buzzwords, especially when the capital further appropriates them to the point that they have become, to an extent, meaningless utterances, like generic labels pinned onto anything mindlessly as to signal virtue.
But, on the other hand, the surge of these topics in both the alternative and the mainstream is indicative of the times we’re living in. There is nothing clearer than the fact that ecological decay is more pervasive now than ever, with the ongoing climate crisis dictating much of how we live—and, perhaps, how we conceive of our future. Think of how, at some point in the year, four typhoons hit our country in only 10 days, an unprecedented phenomenon that has greatly affected our countrymen in ways we thought were unimaginable.
What the continuous string of ecological damages tells us, it seems to me, is that the concept of resilience has become a cliché. Things fall apart in light of the decay, and thus we ought to reckon that it’s impossible to wiggle our way out of such pressing issues by mere virtue of “resilience.”
Acknowledging this is not to lose spirit but rather a call for collectivism towards sustainable futures by nurturing and forming solidarities with the communities we belong to. Disasters one after the other remind us that—to borrow the words of the anthropologist Anna Tsing—if we end the story with decay, we abandon all hope.
In fostering this sense of communal responsibility, artist-run space and initiative 98B COLLABoratory held “Growing Together” in November, a five-day event that merged artistic creativity with community engagement and environmental awareness.
Through their project supported by Japan Foundation Manila, 98B COLLABoratory (or simply 98B) seeks to offer visions of a more sustainable and ecologically conscious future through an accessible platform anchored in creativity: “As with how (the initiative) does its projects, it’s a bit more casual and open. We want to make (discussions like this) accessible,” explained artist Katherine Nuñez, the executive director of 98B.
To recall, 98B is an independent, artists-led initiative based in the historical First United Building (FUB) in Escolta, which, through its projects, has engaged in various advocacies and collaborations to foster a sense of community with its network of multi-disciplinary creatives.
This time, 98B collaborated with local and international artists, conservation experts, and participants from various backgrounds to bring together their insights and encourage collaborative approaches to tackling community and environmental challenges.
Featured activities included recycling sessions through papermaking explorations, assemblage, and collage-making with local artists Francine Lima and Rene Bituin. Artist Aissa Domingo also facilitated a botanical illustration workshop where participants painted native plants to celebrate and explore the history of botanical art and the Philippines’ natural heritage.
Moreover, community organizers and food heritage advocates Genevive Inumerable, Zofia Leal and Gabriel Villegas discussed the role of eating good and healthy food in the community, approaching food as an act of nourishing and nurturing. Abigail Garrino spearheaded a Nature Tree Walk in an arboretum at the UP Diliman campus as the concluding activity of the project.
I caught the walkthroughs of the three exhibitions mounted at FUB. “Paper Garden” by Bituin featured 3D collage works inspired by natural forms using discarded materials to repurpose everyday objects into visual pieces that bring to the fore the beauty of what is often overlooked and forgotten. It also featured the participants’ output in the workshop conducted by the artist.
Human-nature interdependence is the preoccupation of the exhibit “microclimate” by the three-member Japanese artist’s collective Hanage. Much concerned with conceptual underpinnings and their process characterized by global migration and connectivity, the works take the form of textile and mixed-media assemblages made possible by freight logistics. Since one of their members, Miyuki Akiyama, has moved to New York, and the other two, Marico Aoki and Shoko Toda, remain in Tokyo, Hanage has since shifted to doing their collective work remotely while all three maintain individual practice.
Akiyama flew to Manila to finish the large-scale work featuring drawings from the three artists, which were overlaid in a life-size tarpaulin image of them. The drawings are of seeds and maps that speak to the complex entanglement the artists have within and beyond themselves with their environment. On the other hand, a textile work that hung on the building’s staircase used bear motifs, a reference to their personal experience that speaks to human coexistence with other living species. (They were on a picnic once, Akiyama shared, when they spotted a bear near them.)
Underscoring the importance of a multi-faceted approach to sustainability, 98B invited Jershon Pagilagan and Fort Molina, both members of the Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society and the Philippine Native Trees Enthusiasts, to exhibit their terrariums made with native and endemic flora they have gathered from their conservation hikes across the country.
A strong sense of optimism undercurrents the exhibit aptly titled “the world we made,” which tackled the story of the resilience of nature in the face of human destruction. Each terrarium painstakingly assembled and nurtured pointed to the power we humans hold to harm the environment and, more consequentially, the capacity to heal it.
Beyond mere living assemblages, however, the terrariums call attention to salient political issues that intersect with the ecological. Pagilagan and Molina emphasize the invasive nature of exotic species in a work entitled “Pananakop (Invasion),” in which they used Selaginella uncinata, a species native to China, to demonstrate how invasive species encroach and alter spaces to its detriment. In “Mimicry (Panggagaya),” Begonia polillionensis is put side-by-side with ferns to highlight how plants mimic species deemed unpalatable and toxic by herbivores to survive. In this aspect, the exhibit of the conservationist duo engages in the broad process of botanical decolonization through a gesture that integrates art and science.
The day I went to FUB, I had just come from a field trip for my art management class for which we toured museums and galleries in the nearby Intramuros. It was an “artsy” weekend and I was restless and exhausted. When the walkthroughs finally concluded, we had kwentuhan and salusalo at 98B’s humble office.
That’s when I finally had the chance to notice just how varied yet passionate all the participants were. To notice this was magical, and the overwhelming hope I felt made me a little less tired: here are people from different parts of the world, all on different paths, gathering as a community, dreaming of a sustainable future.
This underscores the significance of independent initiatives like 98B in forging multidisciplinary collaborations and making arts more accessible to the public, especially the kind that brings to the fore critical discussions on the problems we are facing today.
So, how do we grow together? As 98B tells us, it just might begin with our communities and the simple act of planting a seed of speculative futures.
***
For information on 98B’s future programs, follow them on Instagram.
