DEC13_SUPERDUPERFINAL

The term kalibutan, aside from being remarkable for its nuanced
significations, would become a method as it references the tropic
nature of curatorial work, an attentiveness to how materials, contexts,
and sensibilities transpose from condition to condition. One of the
curators, Mars Briones, brought to my attention the Waray proverb
kalibutan dalunutan (The world is full of slippery turns). According
to Briones: “In the more literal sense of the proverb, the world is
reckoned as a wet surface. And this may make sense in the context of
a group of islands which has had a history of violent storm surges—
from the recent 2013 super typhoon to way back in the time of the
seventeenth century Jesuit priest and chronicler Francisco Alcina
who said that in Leyte and Samar, ‘tall mountains of water which
form devastating waves, enter, extend areas of the land.’ On an
interpretive level, the proverb is a particular articulation of resonant
tropes concerning fate: ‘gulong ng palad,’ ‘wheel of fortune,’ ‘twist of
fate,’ ‘turn of events,’ ‘turning the tide.’”
I cherish the word kalibutan because it overcomes the binarism
between world and consciousness, ecology and reflexivity. I notice
that there are other words in the Visayas that similarly transcend
certain rationalist dichotomies. Let me toss two into the mix: pamati
and butang. Pamati means feeling or sensing or conjecture based on
intuition. It also means hearing and listening, or paying attention. I
am attracted to this double coding of intellection and the auditory.
The other word is butang, which is thing. In another reckoning, it is
also state, condition, or nature or kabutangan or kahimtang.
This constellation of words in the Visayan languages enlivens the
curatorial method because they ensure porosity and intersubjectivity.
And such is the temper of our kalibutan.
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