DEC13_SUPERDUPERFINAL

the isolation of artists would probably have come and gone
unaccounted. It would not have been deciphered as thoroughly as
it was in an online seminar, furnished by talks, conversations and
solution-driven discussions. What is creative and what is logical
began to morph into one. The virtual VIVA ushered different points
of view in a unicentric channel, and was accessed as a single source.
The recalibrated biennale held a great importance in the history
of art in the Visayas. VIVA ExCon’s 30th year was set in a time
when its core objective of bringing artists together, united and
strong, is both most challenging and most vital. The pandemic
struck the Philippines at a time when the polarization of people’s
socio-economic status was greatly highlighted. The virus began to
spread at a time when there were so many things to be cleared out:
the mistrust of the people towards its government, the staggering
revelation of the percentage of science illiteracy of the populationincluding
leaders, the role of myths and religion in the positioning
of the collective psyche and the punctuated need of preserving
nature, to name a few. Creativity became an extremely essential
resource in this time of scarcity and deprivation. It brought to light
many views on art, its contributions and functions beyond the
artworks and outside a gallery. The insights from the art community
gathered during this long pause is instrumental in adapting to the
new societal conditions. The constructive interference against the
waves of the virus was attained through reinforcing consciousness
and reflection.
A majority of the proposals submitted by artists and art groups across
the thirteen cities and nineteen municipalities of Negros Occidental
were saturated with elements of public interaction as they were all
conceived before the pandemic was noticed. This became the main
obstacle faced by both the submitting and receiving ends of the
proposals. Merely translating their projects into a version fit in a
virtual space was inconsistent with their main objectives and defeats
the intentions of their conceptual framework.
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