David Medalla on art, beauty, nature and balance

What does an ear sound like? We found ourselves wondering during "Tuloy Po Kayo," a lecture by David Medalla at the Ateneo Art Gallery's ArtSpeak series.   The room is packed, and quite a number of people are sitting outside, watching Medalla on a screen. A man stands next to the iconic artist, holding the microphone to his ear. The sound is barely audible, and it is difficult to understand what he is saying. From time to time, we catch fragments of a sentence, and we fill in the blanks based on context and what the lecture is supposed to be about.

  The London-based Filipino artist is currently in residence at the AAG, which hosted the lecture to resonate with the theme of "Migrations," a survey of 500 years of British art history, which will attempt to tell the story of how migrants shaped the country's art.   A pioneer of kinetic art, earth art, performance art, participation art and conceptual art, Medalla was admitted to Columbia University in New York at the age of 14. He studied philosophy and Greek drama, and later moved to Europe. Early this year, the artist unveiled one of his iconic bubble machines "Cloud Canyons No. 14" at New York's New Museum. Described as the first work of auto-creative art, it was selected by exhibitions director Massimiliano Gioni as an iconic modern work of art.   Medalla begins with what seemed like a list of people who had influenced Philippine culture—familiar names like Jose Rizal's patron, Ferdinand Blumentritt, as well as those who had influenced Medalla's life in particular, like Catalan poet Jaime Gil de Biedma and painter Fernando Zobel de Ayala, two early patrons of his art. In between mentioning people, Medalla would share memories of his youth, which were triggered by his visit to the National Museum earlier during the day.   Born in Ermita in 1942 during the Japanese occupation, Medalla recalls the war. "As the war got bigger and bigger, higher and higher, we saw the battle over Manila between the American and Japanese fighter planes. It was incredible. I did some early kind of drawings," he says. He remembers a mabolo tree which he used to climb to watch the girls in the convent on the other side of the wall.   "Luneta was so wide, there were bomb craters. This was fascinating, these bomb craters. During the summer months we would go there with my brothers and friends and cousins and chase butterflies and dragonflies. In the rainy season, it would be filled with water. And then we had tadpoles," he says.   An avid reader, Medalla recalls Joaquin Po, who owned Popular Bookstore on Doroteo Jose Street in Sta. Cruz. "I really loved that bookshop. I loved poetry and when I would pass by he would say, 'Look, we have poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot,’" he said.   Filipiniana roots   At some point, a stand is produced, and we can hear a bit better. Medalla begins to speak about his art. He says that a lot of his work has roots in Filipiniana.   "I did a series about balancing, and I remember the people who sell hilaw na mangga. They used to balance it like this," he demonstrates. "I would watch them as a boy, so many mangoes against so much bagoong. Actually it came out in a lot of my work. I showed the students at UP that your art must come from your real-life experience, and then you transform it," says Medalla, a prodigy who at the age of 12, had already lectured at the University of the Philippines.   Showing photos of Taal Lake, where Governor Vilma Santos recently proposed a Hollywood-like sign of Batangas, Medalla proposes a new movement. "We should go and destroy all our natural resources. They've started, (so) why don't we just continue? Because these people would do these things that are so dumb. They don't realize they have something so beautiful in Tagaytay (that) they've already put skyscrapers. What do they think, this is Brooklyn?" he asks.   "Let's destroy the beauty of our nature. I will tell that to our politicians. Probably they'll do it. But you know how horrible it is? Let's go to our underground river in Palawan, put more garbage... it's unbelievable. I don't come here often and each time I come I go bananas to see this. Because I am an artist. More than anything else art comes from beauty, you know?" he says.   He recalls how he opposed Imelda's plan to construct the Cultural Center of the Philippines, which is very near the place he grew up in. "Manila Bay is destroyed. This was not the Manila Bay I grew up with," he says.   "I'm not a nostalgic, sentimental person. On the opposite because I make art all the time that's experimental. That balance, we must learn to use that balance. Because once we have that balance, we will have a much better environment," he says, before proceeding to invite the audience to participate in a live art piece.   "I made a piece which is just sound. I picked up things from the streets and I gave them to people to read. And it's so simple, it's like the old radios," he says.   "We found some poems in different languages. The Philippines has maybe 150 dialects, I was so curious about these," he says, before reading the English translation of a poem. Distributing copies of the poem in different dialects, Medalla tells his volunteers to read, at first one by one, and then at the same time. The result is a buzz of words. "You will begin to understand the music and beauty of these languages. These things begin very small but eventually we can have this kind of radio going all over the place, from Vietnam to Syria," he says before moving to his next piece.   "I did a piece on Rupert Brooke, who was very handsome. This gave me a chance to photograph handsome young men," he says, before instructing the audience to put their fingers on their chins. As a boy, he read the poems of Rupert Brooke, an English poet of the first World War. "Not a very great poet, but some were very beautiful. He died, not during the war but from a mosquito bite," says Medalla. "Meditate. Try to be as handsome as possible. With your other hand, touch the cheek of the person next to you," he says.   A lesson on senses   The last part of his lecture was on the senses. "When you are in your mother's womb, the first sensation you have is the tactile one. And this is very important also for artists to know because you must know what kind of touch to use," he says.   "The second is of course, sound. Say 'om' and you get that vibration," he tells his audience, who eagerly obey. "The third and the most beautiful is the sense of seeing. The baby wakes up and sees the light. Try covering your eyes," he says. Finally, he offers the audience food. "The thing is to learn the interrelationship between taste and smell," he says.   From outside the room, we watch them on the screen, laughing and mingling. We wonder about the half of the lecture we couldn't hear, whose names we missed, what stories we won't be able to retell. The people are passing bits of calamansi around, laughing and talking. It looks a lot like a party, we observe.   Photographer Miroslav Tichy once described Medalla as "a crazy old charismatic bat of the first order." After a couple of hours of trying to listen to his lecture, it was clear that Tichy knew what he was talking about.   Not that anyone would have it any other way. Judging by the delighted crowd, Medalla puts the art in party. –KG, GMA News