curated exhibition

Food Worlds

The Philippines and its diaspora are a culinary landscape. A global archipelago of scent, sight, sizzle, and spice. An empire of eating memories. 

 

Food Worlds assembles artists and scholars who together create a map of the world through Filipino food. And what a rich, unending series of combinations and juxtapositions that has turned out to be. Worlds, plural.

 

As the number of sources compiled in “Filipino Food Resources” suggests, there is already a vibrant conversation about Filipino food worlds. We invite you to explore our virtual exhibition as it unfolds from April to June 2014, and we look forward to your comments and thoughts. Please share! 

 

Curated by Clare Counihan and Sarita See.

 

In addition to our generous contributors, we would like to thank the following organizations for allowing us to republish works included in Food Worlds:
Berg/Bloomsbury Academic Press
Maya Besa Roxas, on behalf of the family of Doreen G. Fernandez
Gastronomica
Open Media
Our Own Voice and Rowman Little
Penguin Press
University of California Press
 
Exhibition List:
Tria Andrews, “Chicken and Rice, Vito Cruz, Manila”
Michael Arcega, SPAM/MAPS
Roberto Ascalon, “Spam” 
Nerissa Balce, “The Meanings of Marrow” 
Amy Besa, “A Conversation with Historian Alex Orquiza” 
Sita Bhaumik, Letter to an Indian Grocery Store, “To Curry Favor” 
Eileen Castillo, “The Head is the Best Part/September 29, 2013” and “Santelmo” 
Clare Counihan, Filipino Food Resources
Kay Cuajunco, Bibingka
Doreen Fernandez, “Culture Ingested” (with Barbara Kischenblatt-Gimblett) 
Jessica Hagedorn, “Sprikitik” 
Laura Kina, “Black Market” and “Okinawa—All American Food”
Robert Ku, "SPAM" from Dubious Gastronomy
Martin Manalansan, “Immigrant Lives and the Politics of Olfaction in the Global City” 
Tim Manalo, Balut
Johanna Poethig, Placesetting 
Melissa Rosete-Wolfe, Orientalist Gift Wrap
Dennis Somera, “getoffthegravytrain,” “tomorrow tamari’maybe,” and “The Brick Oven” 
Aileen Suzara, “Searching for the Land of Salt” 
Aimee Suzara, “Litany for the Sea” 
Jerry Takigawa, False Food
Wesley Ueunten, “Okinawa Diaspora Blues” 
Imin Yeh, Interview with Johanna Poethig 
 
 
Endnote:
1Doreen G. Fernandez, “Culture Ingested: Notes on the Indigenization of Filipino Food.”

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Clare Counihan

b. 1977
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Clare Counihan earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and her B.A. in English Literature from Duke University. Her research focuses on contemporary southern African experimental literature and the relationship between narrative form and national belonging for unbeloved subjects. She is also deeply interested in food: eating it, cooking it, understanding the ways it reflects and mediates our identities and interactions.

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Sarita Echavez See

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Sarita Echavez See was born in New York City but raised as an "embassy brat" moving from city to city around the world. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she first became involved with U.S. women of color politics, especially the arts and culture movement. She obtained her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. While studying in New York City, she met the Filipino American artists and writers who inspired and continue to inspire her teaching and scholarship. In 2013, she joined the faculty of the University of California, Riverside, where she is an associate professor of Media and Cultural Studies. She previously taught at Williams College, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of California, Davis. Her research and teaching interests include Asian American and Filipino American cultural critique, postcolonial and empire studies, narrative, and theories of gender and sexuality. She is the author of the book-length study The Decolonized Eye: Filipino American Art and Performance (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), in which she argues that contemporary Filipino American forms of aesthetic and performative abstraction powerfully expose and indict the history of American imperialism as itself a form of abstraction. She is at work on the book-length project “Against Accumulation,” which is a study of the politics of accumulation in the American museum and university and of the politics of anti-accumulation in Filipino American theatre, writing, and visual art. She was one of the core organizers of the 2011 conference "Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide" held at the University of California, Riverside, and she has served as a member of the working board of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association. In her work with the Center for Art and Thought and its focus on the contemporary medium of the digital, she envisions CA+T to be a transnational venue for more meaningful, reciprocal encounters between artists and scholars, and she is committed to fostering new forms of literacy, rather than tutelage, and to the transformation, rather than the mere transmission and replication, of knowledge.

location

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  • Born: New York, NY, USA
  • Based: Los Angeles, CA, USA

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Why Sinigang?

Doreen Gamboa Fernandez

1988 - 2014 Criticism. 6 pages. Courtesy of the family of Doreen Fernandez. Sarap: Essays on Philippine Food

contributor

X

Doreen Gamboa Fernandez

b. 1934-2002

Doreen Gamboa Fernandez was born on 28 October 1934 to Aguinaldo Severino Gamboa of Silay, Negros Occidental and Alicia Lucero Gamboa of Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija.

She obtained her A.B., major in English and History in 1954 from St. Scholastica's College, Manila and completed her M.A. in English Literature (1956) and Ph.D. in Literature (1976) from the Ateneo de Manila University. She began teaching at the Ateneo de Manila in 1972 and chaired the departments of Communication, English and Interdisciplinary Studies. She was a member of the editorial boards of Philippine Studies, Filipinas Journal of Philippine Studies, and The Asian Theatre Journal. She would have rendered thirty years service in October 2002.

In 1998 she was recognized with Metrobank Foundation's Outstanding Teacher Award.

She taught literature, composition, creative as well as critical writing, and journalism. Her research included cultural, literary, theater and culinary history, on which she has written for scholarly and popular publications and had regularly been invited to speak at international conferences and symposiums.

She was twice a recipient of the Fulbright Asian Scholar in Residence Award (1983, Ohio University Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute; 1992, Michigan University Seminar on Southeast Asian Literatures in Translation).

A prolific writer, she authored the Iloilo Zarzuela: 1903-1930 (1978); In Performance (1981); Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (1994); Face to Face: The Craft of Interviewing (1995); Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History (1996); Fruits of thePhilippines (1997); Palayok: Philippine Food Through Time, On Site, In the Pot (2000). With Edilberto N. Alegre, she co-authored "The Writer and His Milieu (1984) and Writers and Their Milieu (1987, recipient of National Book Award); the Lasa series on dining in Manila and the provinces (1989, 1990, 1992); Sarap: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (1988); and Kinilaw: A Philippine Cuisine of Freshness (1991).

She wrote video scripts as well: Tikim, a video documentary on Philippine food (1989, Philippine Information Agency); Panitikan on Philippine literature (1992, CCP), which earned first prize, video documentary category from the Film Academy of the Philippines; and Dulaan on Philippine contemporary theater (1994, CCP).

She was a columnist of The Manila Chronicle, Mr. & Ms. magazine, the Philippine Journal of Education, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Food magazine. She has contributed numerous articles in journals, periodicals and books, including to The Oxford Companion to Food (1999, Oxford University Press).

She was editor and contributor to the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (1994, Cultural Center of the Philippines); contributor to the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (1995, Routledge), and with Resil Mojares to Modern Southeast Asian Literature in Translation: A Resource for Teaching (1997, Arizona State University); and editorial consultant as well as contributor to the 10-volume Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People (1998, Asia Publishing Co Ltd).

She was co-founder of the Babaylan Theater Group (1973, with Nicanor G. Tiongson), and the Cultural Research Association of the Philippines (1975). She was a member of the board of trustees of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), and the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, among others. She was also a member of the Manila Critics Circleand of the judiciary for the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.

She received the Achievement Award from the National Research Council in 1997, and in 1999 she was recognized with the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts (Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Philippine Centennial Commission), honoring 100 Filipinos who helped shape the arts in the Philippines in the last century (1898-1998).

She was married to interior designer Wili Fernandez.

 

Photograph by Stella Kalaw.

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  • Born: The Philippines
  • Based: Manila, Philippines

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Culture Ingested: On the Indigenization of Philippine Food

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Doreen Gamboa Fernandez

2003 - 2014 Criticism. 13 pages. Courtesy of Gastronomica, Stella Kalaw, and Christina Quisumbing Ramilo.

Gastronomica 3.1 (Winter 2003): 58-71.

contributor

X

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

b. 1942

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University and Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Her books include Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt), winner of two book awards; The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (with Jonathan Karp); Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (with Jeffrey Shandler); the edited volume Writing a Modern Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Salo W. Baron, which won a National Jewish Book Award in 2006; among others.

She was honored for lifetime achievement by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, received the Mlotek Prize for Yiddish and Yiddish Culture, honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, University of Haifa, and Indiana Univeristy, and the 2015 Marshall Sklare Award for her contribution to the social scientific study of Jewry. She was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for her contribution to POLIN Museum. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on Advisory Boards for the Council of American Jewish Museums, Jewish Museum Vienna, Jewish Museum Berlin, and the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. She also advises on museum and exhibition projects in the United States, Lithuania, Albania, and Israel.

 

contributor

X

Doreen Gamboa Fernandez

b. 1934-2002

Doreen Gamboa Fernandez was born on 28 October 1934 to Aguinaldo Severino Gamboa of Silay, Negros Occidental and Alicia Lucero Gamboa of Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija.

She obtained her A.B., major in English and History in 1954 from St. Scholastica's College, Manila and completed her M.A. in English Literature (1956) and Ph.D. in Literature (1976) from the Ateneo de Manila University. She began teaching at the Ateneo de Manila in 1972 and chaired the departments of Communication, English and Interdisciplinary Studies. She was a member of the editorial boards of Philippine Studies, Filipinas Journal of Philippine Studies, and The Asian Theatre Journal. She would have rendered thirty years service in October 2002.

In 1998 she was recognized with Metrobank Foundation's Outstanding Teacher Award.

She taught literature, composition, creative as well as critical writing, and journalism. Her research included cultural, literary, theater and culinary history, on which she has written for scholarly and popular publications and had regularly been invited to speak at international conferences and symposiums.

She was twice a recipient of the Fulbright Asian Scholar in Residence Award (1983, Ohio University Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute; 1992, Michigan University Seminar on Southeast Asian Literatures in Translation).

A prolific writer, she authored the Iloilo Zarzuela: 1903-1930 (1978); In Performance (1981); Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (1994); Face to Face: The Craft of Interviewing (1995); Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History (1996); Fruits of thePhilippines (1997); Palayok: Philippine Food Through Time, On Site, In the Pot (2000). With Edilberto N. Alegre, she co-authored "The Writer and His Milieu (1984) and Writers and Their Milieu (1987, recipient of National Book Award); the Lasa series on dining in Manila and the provinces (1989, 1990, 1992); Sarap: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (1988); and Kinilaw: A Philippine Cuisine of Freshness (1991).

She wrote video scripts as well: Tikim, a video documentary on Philippine food (1989, Philippine Information Agency); Panitikan on Philippine literature (1992, CCP), which earned first prize, video documentary category from the Film Academy of the Philippines; and Dulaan on Philippine contemporary theater (1994, CCP).

She was a columnist of The Manila Chronicle, Mr. & Ms. magazine, the Philippine Journal of Education, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Food magazine. She has contributed numerous articles in journals, periodicals and books, including to The Oxford Companion to Food (1999, Oxford University Press).

She was editor and contributor to the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (1994, Cultural Center of the Philippines); contributor to the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (1995, Routledge), and with Resil Mojares to Modern Southeast Asian Literature in Translation: A Resource for Teaching (1997, Arizona State University); and editorial consultant as well as contributor to the 10-volume Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People (1998, Asia Publishing Co Ltd).

She was co-founder of the Babaylan Theater Group (1973, with Nicanor G. Tiongson), and the Cultural Research Association of the Philippines (1975). She was a member of the board of trustees of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), and the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, among others. She was also a member of the Manila Critics Circleand of the judiciary for the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.

She received the Achievement Award from the National Research Council in 1997, and in 1999 she was recognized with the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts (Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Philippine Centennial Commission), honoring 100 Filipinos who helped shape the arts in the Philippines in the last century (1898-1998).

She was married to interior designer Wili Fernandez.

 

Photograph by Stella Kalaw.

location

X
  • Born: The Philippines
  • Based: Manila, Philippines

comments

X

getoffthegravy-traini'tsallgravy

DeNNiSOmeRa

2014 4m 57s Courtesy of the artist.

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X

DeNNiSOmeRa

b. Year of the Snake/US ImmigratioNationality Act
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Practicing pokin'wordsplayw/pinch/punch of performancEa®thistor/y on and off the page, in and out of his mindbody, DeNNiSOmeRa is a writerliPOethink®, nEOnotsoPOst.©o.lOnial FOet/schola®©tivisavista, FOst.©o.lOnial FOetal.

Born in Baguio City, Benguet Province, Luzon Island on the archipelago known in the second language of its colonization as the Philippines, Dennis emigrated in his mother's lap to the US when he was eleven months old. He grew up His growth wa s tunted in the intolerance/ignorance of Sacramento, CA, the larger US misrepresentations and omissions of Asian/Pilipino-American from literature, history, media, and authority/leadershiPositions. Eventually he was borne by the ink and movement of the pen on page then toncescreened through keyboard, the act of writing performing his ontology through and in spite of WEstern eUrocentric olonialimperial assimilationist, objectifying, appropriative logics.

After graduating from UCSanta Cruz, then migrating to San FranciscOakland where he worked with youth for several years, he returned to the Philippines (and Southeast Asia) for the firstime since his i'mmigration. At an aRts festival in his birthplace, he participated in poetry and video workshops. After nine months in the Philippines and three traveling in Southeast Asia, he returned to the US, where he continued to grow his writing & performancEa® th r ough workshops, open mics and performance opportunities back in the SF Bay Area via June Jordan's Poetry for the People at UCBerkeley, Glide Memorial Church and the Mission Cultural Center in SF, the Ohana Open Mic in Oakland, Kearny Street Workshop in SF and a PilipinoAM theater based in SF, SOMA's Bindlestiff Studios.

Following a year at California College of Arts and Crafts, he found Mills College in Oakland to be the place where his thoroughandling of language were most at home. Through Mills, he not only refined a praxis of experimentaLANGUAGE writing to represent his thoughts poetically in the M.F.A.––but also during performance collaborations w/experimental musicians and dancers in/out of his mindbody––he continUed to further the process and perFORMance of language beyond the page: sowing seeds for his present pursuit of a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at UCDavis. Dennis' writing has been published online and off in poetry journals Tinfish, Chain, Cricket Online Review, Bay Poetics, POMPOM, 2nd Avenue Poetry, Deep Oakland. His morecent wordsplaying has been focused just off screen in a film narration performance called movietelling(Lew)/Katsuben (a silent film era Japanese form(oreso the Korean Pyonsa who subverted Japanese propaganda films in their colonial era there), performing his mov[i.e.]telling work nationally in NYC, Miami, Oakland SF.

My current aRtisticreati've work is a poeticritical illumination of the colonialimperial/patriarchal inscription on the mindbody through poeticritical archi“text”uralandscapes–––primarily revisioning in the form of mov[i.e.]telling/Katsuben: a Japanese form of film narration from the silent film era; he better identifies with the Korean film narrators called Pyonsa who subverted Japanese colonial propaganda films in their colonial era there.

Through a nEOnotsOpoOst©olOnialense, my critical work and research attends to persistent assimilative logics, objectificational representation practices and intellectual appropriations in settler hegemonicolonial culture perpetuating continued epistemicolonial violences––stemming from WEstern civilization'self-constitution as the repression and projection of its disowned savage/barbarian/heathen on all Others and continUed consolidation through persistent un/conscioUS EUrasing t/races of Others and the EUrasure of thesEUrasures–––and the critical/theoretical and comparative gestures in hybridiasporic poetics by intellectuals and writers of the "missing passage", specifically around the tropes of utterance, speech, the tongue, languagetc. as constant and continued DEcolonizingeMpoweresponses to, aswellasymptoms of a continuing white WEsterneUrocentric hegemonicolonial state.

location

X
  • Born: Baguio City, Philippines
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Baguio City, Philippines
    San Francisco, CA, USA

comments

X

The Brick Oven

DeNNiSOmeRa

2012 Poem. Courtesy of the author.

contributor

X

DeNNiSOmeRa

b. Year of the Snake/US ImmigratioNationality Act
image description
  • See All Works

Practicing pokin'wordsplayw/pinch/punch of performancEa®thistor/y on and off the page, in and out of his mindbody, DeNNiSOmeRa is a writerliPOethink®, nEOnotsoPOst.©o.lOnial FOet/schola®©tivisavista, FOst.©o.lOnial FOetal.

Born in Baguio City, Benguet Province, Luzon Island on the archipelago known in the second language of its colonization as the Philippines, Dennis emigrated in his mother's lap to the US when he was eleven months old. He grew up His growth wa s tunted in the intolerance/ignorance of Sacramento, CA, the larger US misrepresentations and omissions of Asian/Pilipino-American from literature, history, media, and authority/leadershiPositions. Eventually he was borne by the ink and movement of the pen on page then toncescreened through keyboard, the act of writing performing his ontology through and in spite of WEstern eUrocentric olonialimperial assimilationist, objectifying, appropriative logics.

After graduating from UCSanta Cruz, then migrating to San FranciscOakland where he worked with youth for several years, he returned to the Philippines (and Southeast Asia) for the firstime since his i'mmigration. At an aRts festival in his birthplace, he participated in poetry and video workshops. After nine months in the Philippines and three traveling in Southeast Asia, he returned to the US, where he continued to grow his writing & performancEa® th r ough workshops, open mics and performance opportunities back in the SF Bay Area via June Jordan's Poetry for the People at UCBerkeley, Glide Memorial Church and the Mission Cultural Center in SF, the Ohana Open Mic in Oakland, Kearny Street Workshop in SF and a PilipinoAM theater based in SF, SOMA's Bindlestiff Studios.

Following a year at California College of Arts and Crafts, he found Mills College in Oakland to be the place where his thoroughandling of language were most at home. Through Mills, he not only refined a praxis of experimentaLANGUAGE writing to represent his thoughts poetically in the M.F.A.––but also during performance collaborations w/experimental musicians and dancers in/out of his mindbody––he continUed to further the process and perFORMance of language beyond the page: sowing seeds for his present pursuit of a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at UCDavis. Dennis' writing has been published online and off in poetry journals Tinfish, Chain, Cricket Online Review, Bay Poetics, POMPOM, 2nd Avenue Poetry, Deep Oakland. His morecent wordsplaying has been focused just off screen in a film narration performance called movietelling(Lew)/Katsuben (a silent film era Japanese form(oreso the Korean Pyonsa who subverted Japanese propaganda films in their colonial era there), performing his mov[i.e.]telling work nationally in NYC, Miami, Oakland SF.

My current aRtisticreati've work is a poeticritical illumination of the colonialimperial/patriarchal inscription on the mindbody through poeticritical archi“text”uralandscapes–––primarily revisioning in the form of mov[i.e.]telling/Katsuben: a Japanese form of film narration from the silent film era; he better identifies with the Korean film narrators called Pyonsa who subverted Japanese colonial propaganda films in their colonial era there.

Through a nEOnotsOpoOst©olOnialense, my critical work and research attends to persistent assimilative logics, objectificational representation practices and intellectual appropriations in settler hegemonicolonial culture perpetuating continued epistemicolonial violences––stemming from WEstern civilization'self-constitution as the repression and projection of its disowned savage/barbarian/heathen on all Others and continUed consolidation through persistent un/conscioUS EUrasing t/races of Others and the EUrasure of thesEUrasures–––and the critical/theoretical and comparative gestures in hybridiasporic poetics by intellectuals and writers of the "missing passage", specifically around the tropes of utterance, speech, the tongue, languagetc. as constant and continued DEcolonizingeMpoweresponses to, aswellasymptoms of a continuing white WEsterneUrocentric hegemonicolonial state.

location

X
  • Born: Baguio City, Philippines
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Baguio City, Philippines
    San Francisco, CA, USA

comments

X

tomorrowtamari'- mayBE

DeNNiSOmeRa

2012 - 2014 Haiku. Courtesy of the author.

contributor

X

DeNNiSOmeRa

b. Year of the Snake/US ImmigratioNationality Act
image description
  • See All Works

Practicing pokin'wordsplayw/pinch/punch of performancEa®thistor/y on and off the page, in and out of his mindbody, DeNNiSOmeRa is a writerliPOethink®, nEOnotsoPOst.©o.lOnial FOet/schola®©tivisavista, FOst.©o.lOnial FOetal.

Born in Baguio City, Benguet Province, Luzon Island on the archipelago known in the second language of its colonization as the Philippines, Dennis emigrated in his mother's lap to the US when he was eleven months old. He grew up His growth wa s tunted in the intolerance/ignorance of Sacramento, CA, the larger US misrepresentations and omissions of Asian/Pilipino-American from literature, history, media, and authority/leadershiPositions. Eventually he was borne by the ink and movement of the pen on page then toncescreened through keyboard, the act of writing performing his ontology through and in spite of WEstern eUrocentric olonialimperial assimilationist, objectifying, appropriative logics.

After graduating from UCSanta Cruz, then migrating to San FranciscOakland where he worked with youth for several years, he returned to the Philippines (and Southeast Asia) for the firstime since his i'mmigration. At an aRts festival in his birthplace, he participated in poetry and video workshops. After nine months in the Philippines and three traveling in Southeast Asia, he returned to the US, where he continued to grow his writing & performancEa® th r ough workshops, open mics and performance opportunities back in the SF Bay Area via June Jordan's Poetry for the People at UCBerkeley, Glide Memorial Church and the Mission Cultural Center in SF, the Ohana Open Mic in Oakland, Kearny Street Workshop in SF and a PilipinoAM theater based in SF, SOMA's Bindlestiff Studios.

Following a year at California College of Arts and Crafts, he found Mills College in Oakland to be the place where his thoroughandling of language were most at home. Through Mills, he not only refined a praxis of experimentaLANGUAGE writing to represent his thoughts poetically in the M.F.A.––but also during performance collaborations w/experimental musicians and dancers in/out of his mindbody––he continUed to further the process and perFORMance of language beyond the page: sowing seeds for his present pursuit of a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at UCDavis. Dennis' writing has been published online and off in poetry journals Tinfish, Chain, Cricket Online Review, Bay Poetics, POMPOM, 2nd Avenue Poetry, Deep Oakland. His morecent wordsplaying has been focused just off screen in a film narration performance called movietelling(Lew)/Katsuben (a silent film era Japanese form(oreso the Korean Pyonsa who subverted Japanese propaganda films in their colonial era there), performing his mov[i.e.]telling work nationally in NYC, Miami, Oakland SF.

My current aRtisticreati've work is a poeticritical illumination of the colonialimperial/patriarchal inscription on the mindbody through poeticritical archi“text”uralandscapes–––primarily revisioning in the form of mov[i.e.]telling/Katsuben: a Japanese form of film narration from the silent film era; he better identifies with the Korean film narrators called Pyonsa who subverted Japanese colonial propaganda films in their colonial era there.

Through a nEOnotsOpoOst©olOnialense, my critical work and research attends to persistent assimilative logics, objectificational representation practices and intellectual appropriations in settler hegemonicolonial culture perpetuating continued epistemicolonial violences––stemming from WEstern civilization'self-constitution as the repression and projection of its disowned savage/barbarian/heathen on all Others and continUed consolidation through persistent un/conscioUS EUrasing t/races of Others and the EUrasure of thesEUrasures–––and the critical/theoretical and comparative gestures in hybridiasporic poetics by intellectuals and writers of the "missing passage", specifically around the tropes of utterance, speech, the tongue, languagetc. as constant and continued DEcolonizingeMpoweresponses to, aswellasymptoms of a continuing white WEsterneUrocentric hegemonicolonial state.

location

X
  • Born: Baguio City, Philippines
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Baguio City, Philippines
    San Francisco, CA, USA

comments

X

Litany for the Sea

Aimee Suzara

Apr 20, 2010 Poem. Courtesy of the author.

contributor

X

Aimee Suzara

b. 1975
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Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, performer and educator based in Oakland. Invited as a featured artist nationally from Florida to Oregon, she is also a member of the writer’s pool for PlayGround at Berkeley Repertory Theater and a Hedgebrook residency alumnae. Her second play, A History of the Body, was awarded the East Bay Community Fund Matching Commission and a grant from National Endowment for the Arts. Her first chapbook, the space between, was nominated for the California Book Award and her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her full length book, SOUVENIR, is expected for publication in 2014. Suzara teaches Creative Writing at California State University at Monterey Bay. Of her work, writer Kimberly Dark has said, “Aimee is bringing themes to light that beg to be handled - race and gender, the complexities of immigration and colonization, queer lives and how we navigate our human complexities in the everyday world.”

My mission is to create, and help others create, poetic and theatrical work about race, gender, and the body to provoke dialogue and social change.

location

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  • Born: New York, NY, USA
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA

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Alexander Orquiza

b. 1980

Alex Orquiza is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Classics at Providence College. He is a historian of the United States and the world, American cultural history, food history, immigration, and the Philippines. His forthcoming book, Taste of Control: Food and the Filipino Colonial Mentality Under American Rule, will be published by Rutgers University Press.

location

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  • Born: USA
  • Based: Boston, MA, USA

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False Food (F-321)

Jerry Takigawa

2010 Photograph 19 in. x 13.25 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jerry Takigawa

b. 1945

Photographer and graphic designer Jerry Takigawa has been a social and environmental advocate since 1969. With forty years of practice in photography and design, he believes aesthetics is an essential element in storytelling. Takigawa received a B.F.A., with an emphasis in painting, from San Francisco State University in 1967. He studied photography under Don Worth. While living in the San Francisco Bay Area, he utilized his art and design skills to help develop a pilot VISTA program (Volunteers in Service to America) in Oakland, California. In 1982, he became the first photographer to receive the Imogen Cunningham Award for color photography. Takigawa is a past-president of People in Communications Arts (PiCA), a trustee for the Monterey Museum of Art, and currently serves as President for the Center for Photographic Art (CPA).

Currently, Takigawa is spearheading a shift in the Center for Photographic Arts’ position. This shift can be described as nuturing the personal growth inherent in art making and celebrating the artists’ creative contribution to the community. CPA seeks to instill the importance and awareness of personal development, how it intersects with artistic development in a cyclical fashion and the purpose and importance of art in the social discourse.

His beliefs in the power of visual communication and new ways of thinking are developed in Idea Soup (2009), Many Hats (2011), and Grace in Uncertainty (2013).

Takigawa’s work is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the Monterey Museum of Art, The San Francisco Foundation, the University of Louisville, The Monterey Vineyard, Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, the Imogen Cunningham Trust, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Upcoming solo exhibitions include Green Chalk Contemporary, False Food, Monterey, CA; The Pacific Grove Art Center, Landscapes of Presence, Pacific Grove CA; and The Griffin Museum of Photography, False Food, Winchester MA in 2015.

False Food: A Metaphor for Survival

The volunteer from the Monterey Bay Aquarium held up a jar for the television audience to see. The jar was filled with colorful pieces of plastic collected from the belly of a dead albatross on Midway Atoll. Mistaking plastic debris for food in the Pacific Gyre has become a common occurrence, resulting in the death of countless albatross each year. Deceived by “empty calories,” the adult albatross feed their chicks harmful plastic, resulting in the same fatal outcome.

When it comes to plastic, the biggest “landfill” isn’t on land but in our oceans—and if our oceans are in trouble, we’re in trouble. Gyres of plastic dangerously impact the food chain. Unlike organic debris, plastic does not biodegrade. It eventually degrades into smaller and smaller particles until it becomes a soup of molecular plastic. At this size, these molecules enter the food chain and we inadvertently become the albatross. We live in a disposable consumer society. What we throw away we ultimately consume.

In western society, we tend to mistake the excessive consumption of material goods for sustenance. Plastic is often designed for “single-use,” but, by nature, every molecule ever developed is still with us today. My intent as a photographer is for my work to be engaging and nourishing. My goal is to inspire viewers to look more deeply. A good photograph can compel the viewer to want to know the narrative. Negative images can cause people to feel helpless and overwhelmed; responding from the reptilian brain, where clear and ethical thinking is not possible. In contrast, I believe aesthetics allows the viewer to become engaged with the narrative.

How can we learn to live with chaos and turn it into something beautiful, sustainable, and nourishing? This is a query worth resolution. The transformation of plastic waste in False Food is not only an act of defiance; it’s an act of inspiration. If we want to change what we recoil from, we must consider the consciousness that has created what we see. False Food seeks to redeem hope, beauty, and nourishment.

Special thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for generously providing the plastic artifacts used in making these images.

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  • Born: Chicago, IL, USA
  • Based: Carmel Valley, CA, USA

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False Food (F-329)

Jerry Takigawa

2010 Photograph 19 in. x 13.25 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jerry Takigawa

b. 1945

Photographer and graphic designer Jerry Takigawa has been a social and environmental advocate since 1969. With forty years of practice in photography and design, he believes aesthetics is an essential element in storytelling. Takigawa received a B.F.A., with an emphasis in painting, from San Francisco State University in 1967. He studied photography under Don Worth. While living in the San Francisco Bay Area, he utilized his art and design skills to help develop a pilot VISTA program (Volunteers in Service to America) in Oakland, California. In 1982, he became the first photographer to receive the Imogen Cunningham Award for color photography. Takigawa is a past-president of People in Communications Arts (PiCA), a trustee for the Monterey Museum of Art, and currently serves as President for the Center for Photographic Art (CPA).

Currently, Takigawa is spearheading a shift in the Center for Photographic Arts’ position. This shift can be described as nuturing the personal growth inherent in art making and celebrating the artists’ creative contribution to the community. CPA seeks to instill the importance and awareness of personal development, how it intersects with artistic development in a cyclical fashion and the purpose and importance of art in the social discourse.

His beliefs in the power of visual communication and new ways of thinking are developed in Idea Soup (2009), Many Hats (2011), and Grace in Uncertainty (2013).

Takigawa’s work is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the Monterey Museum of Art, The San Francisco Foundation, the University of Louisville, The Monterey Vineyard, Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, the Imogen Cunningham Trust, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Upcoming solo exhibitions include Green Chalk Contemporary, False Food, Monterey, CA; The Pacific Grove Art Center, Landscapes of Presence, Pacific Grove CA; and The Griffin Museum of Photography, False Food, Winchester MA in 2015.

False Food: A Metaphor for Survival

The volunteer from the Monterey Bay Aquarium held up a jar for the television audience to see. The jar was filled with colorful pieces of plastic collected from the belly of a dead albatross on Midway Atoll. Mistaking plastic debris for food in the Pacific Gyre has become a common occurrence, resulting in the death of countless albatross each year. Deceived by “empty calories,” the adult albatross feed their chicks harmful plastic, resulting in the same fatal outcome.

When it comes to plastic, the biggest “landfill” isn’t on land but in our oceans—and if our oceans are in trouble, we’re in trouble. Gyres of plastic dangerously impact the food chain. Unlike organic debris, plastic does not biodegrade. It eventually degrades into smaller and smaller particles until it becomes a soup of molecular plastic. At this size, these molecules enter the food chain and we inadvertently become the albatross. We live in a disposable consumer society. What we throw away we ultimately consume.

In western society, we tend to mistake the excessive consumption of material goods for sustenance. Plastic is often designed for “single-use,” but, by nature, every molecule ever developed is still with us today. My intent as a photographer is for my work to be engaging and nourishing. My goal is to inspire viewers to look more deeply. A good photograph can compel the viewer to want to know the narrative. Negative images can cause people to feel helpless and overwhelmed; responding from the reptilian brain, where clear and ethical thinking is not possible. In contrast, I believe aesthetics allows the viewer to become engaged with the narrative.

How can we learn to live with chaos and turn it into something beautiful, sustainable, and nourishing? This is a query worth resolution. The transformation of plastic waste in False Food is not only an act of defiance; it’s an act of inspiration. If we want to change what we recoil from, we must consider the consciousness that has created what we see. False Food seeks to redeem hope, beauty, and nourishment.

Special thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for generously providing the plastic artifacts used in making these images.

location

X
  • Born: Chicago, IL, USA
  • Based: Carmel Valley, CA, USA

comments

X