ArtSpeak: Defying Eyes: Creative Impulse, Memory Work, and Archival Practice

Join us at the Ateneo Art Gallery for ArtSpeak "Defying Eyes: Creative Impulse, Memory Work, and Archival Practice" – with Bono Olgado, Bea Mariano, and Emdadul Hoque Topu, happening this January 5, Friday!

5 January 2024, Friday

2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Philippine Standard Time)

Ben Chan ArtSuite, 2F Ateneo Art Gallery

Soledad V Pangilinan Arts Wing, Areté, Ateneo de Manila University

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Registration REQUIRED at https://go.ateneo.net/DefyingEyes

Ateneo Art Gallery and Respond and Break the Silence Against the Killings (RESBAK) present “Defying Eyes: Creative Impulse, Memory Work, and Archival Practice” — an ArtSpeak session with archivist and educator Bono Olgado, interdisciplinary Filipina artist Bea Mariano, and Dhaka-based arts researcher and curator Emdadul Hoque Topu this 5 January 2024, 2:00 pm at the Ben Chan ArtSuite, 2F Ateneo Art Gallery, Areté. “Defying Eyes: Creative Impulse, Memory Work, and Archival Practice” is a two-hour program that will begin with a talk about the logics and desires of Empire embedded in archive collections and practices, and conclude with presentations of responses and strategies undertaken by arts researchers and scholars to counter this legacy.

This ArtSpeak program is organized in line with Snare for Birds: Rereading the Colonial Archive, a collaborative research art project of Kiri Dalena, Lizza May David, and Jaclyn Reyes, curated by Marika Constantino and Iris Ferrer. “Snare for Birds: Rereading the Colonial Archive” is mounted with support from the Goethe-Institut Manila, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, co-presented with The Panublion Museum (Roxas City, Capiz), Alfredo F. Tadiar Library and Puón (San Fernando, La Union). The exhibition is on-view from 16 September 2023 – 17 February 2024 at the Wilson L Sy Prints and Drawings Gallery, 2F Ateneo Art Gallery, Soledad V Pangilinan Arts Wing, Areté, Ateneo de Manila University.

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The Speakers:

Bono Olgado is an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines School of Library and Information Studies teaching archival theory and practice. Bono is finishing his Ph.D. in Informatics with a graduate emphasis in Global Studies at the University of California, Irvine where he studies the datafication of memory and transitional justice. He received his M.A. in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation at New York University and a B.A. in Social Sciences and Communication from the Ateneo de Manila University. An audiovisual archivist by trade, Bono has worked on a number archiving and documentation initiatives across the globe particularly pertaining to cinematic heritage and human rights. He served as the inaugural Director of the National Film Archives of the Philippines (now Philippine Film Archive).

Bea Mariano experiments mainly with words, images, sound and video. She also transcribes, translates and codes. At present she is trying out — slowly, gently, and out of necessity — automatic and expressionistic approaches to art-making. She received her BA in Art Studies from the University of the Philippines Diliman.

She was a fellow for poetry in Filipino at the 14th Ateneo National Writers Workshop, and a digital fellow of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum’s (R.J.M.) Leaky Archive project in 2022, engaging with the institution’s Philippine colonial photographs collection.

Commissioned by Los Otros for Asian Artist Moving Image Platform, her most recent experimental film, Dominion, which made use of archival photographs, was programmed at the Seoul International Women's Film Festival and was part of QCinema’s Southeast Asian Shorts Competition 2023.

Currently, she is working on dalumat, dalamhati, dignidad, a web-based entity on/of decoloniality.

Emdadul Hoque Topu is an art researcher and practitioner. He obtained his M.A. degree from the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a B.F.A. in the History of Art from the University of Dhaka. Topu's work primarily focuses on gathering critical forensic evidence of the colonial domination over the South Asian indigenous living tradition, natural biodiversity, and its continuous expansion over cultural diversity. He has taken part in Documenta Fifteen with Britto Arts Trust and was a fellow for R.J.M.’s Leaky Archive digital fellowship program and "Artist Make Space" with British Council U.K. Moreover, he has worked on developing the "Britto Archive" project with Art South Asia Project and Britto Arts Trust.

At present, Topu's practice involves mapping the world's climate crisis, the migrant crisis, consumerist culture, understanding the political implications of state violence, and contributing to policy-making to safeguard the cultures of endangered indigenous communities -