DEC13_SUPERDUPERFINAL

Solitaryo Cinco, The Urban in Kalibutan
Solitaryo Cinco is a Cebu-based art collective and studio of visual
artists Mark Anthony Copino (Kidlat), John Villoria (NARK),
Sebastian Dequina Peyanes III (Bastinuod) and Khriss Ihmmanuelle
Bajade (BAHK). The collective was first formed in 2015 as Asylum
38 aimed to transform dirty and torn streets of the city into creative
spaces for personal work and social commentaries.
Solitrayo Cinco’s 10.3157 ° N, 123.8854 ° E Project is derived from
the geographic coordinates of Cebu City using its longitudinal and
latitudinal location in the world map. Instantly, it points out to a
geophysical entity wherein the city occupies a specific point in the
globe. More so, the project responds to how Cebu City as space is
assessed, described and formed using surveillance methods taken
from above, taken from a position of height.
Solitaryo’s critical approach to the Kalibutan project scrutinizes
government authority’s methods in assessing Cebu City’s sudden
surge of covid cases in the early part of the pandemic that made
it the country’s epicenter. The unprecedented number of cases
prompted the national government to send more military personnel
to guard border controls. The national pandemic team surveyed
the city and its environs using helicopter surveillance to assess the
impact of the covid outbreak in densely populated areas in the city.
This approach proved to be impersonal and unpopular. The project
resounds people’s sentiments against the government’s unscientific
approach in handling pandemic issues. Its lack of on-the-ground
data and community-oriented engagement was said to result in slow
and detached pandemic response.
By using google map images and drone videos of the city, the project
utilizes distant images of highly urbanized and compact communities
superimposing them on silhouettes of people in mobility. Scaling
up the figures to fit street walls, the composition borrows street art
aesthetics. In an attempt to humanize statistical data, the project
follows a mindfulness of the daily affairs of people disrupted by the
pandemic. The imposing scale of the silhouettes highlights the need
to project people beyond numbers and portray them as actual living
people that tow the intricate and complicated web of urban life.
Alcudia and Solitrayo Cinco’s subsequent projects attempts to
respond to the emergency of the pandemic and make sense of what
was left behind of the ‘normal life’ as people toil forward to what is
popularly believed to be the ‘new normal’.
To be mindful of the precarious conditions of the world today, VIVA
ExCon 2020 challenges cultural producers to respond to the everchanging
dynamics of the world and actively engage in bringing it
forward to a more humane condition where creativity and thought
could flourish. The art of VIVA ExCon 2020 can only hope to see
an abundance of critically-engaged works that allows audiences to
renew a world in many different ways, at different speed, in different
directions.
Reference:
Anderson, B. (2016). “Emergency/Everyday.” in Time: A Vocabulary of the Present, edited by Joel Burges and Amy Elias, 177-191.
New York: New York University Press.
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