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A STORY
can be retold in many ways—Mercedes and Consuelo, the
protagonists in Richard Abelardo’s 1950 film Ang
Mutya ng Pasig, chose to recount their woes in
beautiful prose and music. For Australia-based Filipino
artist Alwin Reamillo, the story of his family’s
involvement in the piano industry is retold in his
current work, entitled The Nicanor Abelardo Grand
Piano Project, at the UP Vargas Museum. The project
recounts Reamillo’s personal experiences in his family’s
piano-making workshop at Javencillo and Co. Inc., makers
of Wittenberg pianos in the ’60s and ’70s, through the
process of restoring “disused” pianos and turning them
into conceptual-art case instruments. Just like Consuelo
and her search for her parents and her personal
identity, Reamillo’s project is a personal journey
through time as he continues to identify owners of
disused Wittenberg pianos who are willing to sell their
pianos for the restoration project, salvage materials
from his father’s old workshop and trace the whereabouts
of the piano technicians who were displaced by the
demise of their company.
While
the project is a personal journey, it is not simply the
retelling of a familial narrative but the restoration of
a nation’s pride in its artistic legacy. To celebrate
the centenary of the University of the Philippines (UP),
these art case pianos serve as conceptual portraits
paying tribute to the musical legacy of Nicanor
Abelardo, the former head of the Department of
Composition of the UP Conservatory of Music and one of
the Philippines’ most prolific composers.
The
ongoing project at the Vargas Museum started in March
when Reamillo flew in from Australia to start the
restoration process. To date, he has finished the
restoration of two Wittenberg upright pianos, the soft
launch of which was held on June 20. As in most of
Reamillo’s works, this project references imagery drawn
from popular culture animated through video, text and
found objects. For this soft launch, the project
thematized Abelardo’s Mutya ng Pasig and was
animated through the projection of the 1950’s movie of
the same title. The song was also rendered that night by
Mia Adriana Stanching. The text of Abelardo’s classic
composition in Reamillo’s own handwriting adorned one of
the usually bare walls in the Vargas Museum lobby. It
was juxtaposed with found piano parts and pictures of
dragonflies. A dragonfly was also perched on top of one
of the restored upright pianos. According to Reamillo,
the dragonfly signifies transformation from a
water-borne insect to an air-borne one, the image of
which may be metaphorically linked to the transformation
of the “disused” pianos into fully functioning
instruments.
On top
of another piano, a mechanism for a miniature music box
playing “Waltzing Matilda” provided a play on musical
instruments and their parts, small-scale reconstruction
of large-scale works, as well as a conceptual link
between the Australian song as “folk” and the influence
of Filipino folk styles such as the awit and kumintang
in Abelardo’s compositions. There is also an uncanny
similarity in the movie Ang Mutya ng Pasig and
“Waltzing Matilda” in that the protagonists in both
stories drowned and thereafter haunted the site—the
former to redress the errors of the past and the latter
to evade being arrested for stealing a sheep. In the
coming months, Reamillo aims to restore a grand piano
owned by former UP College of Music Dean Reynaldo Paguio,
creating small-scale wing-shaped piano lids and their
mirror construction to depict Abelardo’s journey as a
government scholar to the United States. These “wing
works” will thematically reference other classic
kundiman compositions by Abelardo, such as “Nasaan Ka,
Irog” and “Bituing Marikit.” The final launch of this
project will be in December of this year.
This
highly conceptual-art project promotes a rapprochement
between art processes and criticism, straddling the
realms of both artistic and social concerns. It
emphasizes the collaborative efforts of artist Reamillo
and piano technicians Jaime Pastorfide, Rabino Sabas and
Tranquilino Tosio. Through this project, the displaced
piano technicians are given work after a long hiatus and
are given a voice through the sharing of
intellectual-property rights to the finished product
with the artist. Reamillo underscores the artistic
process as a communal effort in the traditional spirit
of bayanihan. This idea of communal effort has
constantly been referred to in many of his previous
works. This project is processual, privileging the
process over the end product. While the soft launch had
a good turn-out of guests, mostly faculty and students
from UP, those who are interested in Reamillo’s work
should go to the museum when artist and technicians are
working on the pianos, for the context and meaning is
lost if only the end product is appreciated.
While
many institutions continue to promote a consumerist
culture of art, Reamillo’s conceptual-art project allows
the public to reflect on the meaning of art. Should art
emphasize aesthetics and technical skills alone, or
should it be revisionary, foregrounding an intellectual
understanding of artistic processes and experience?
Despite the meager funding support for this project,
Reamillo was able to successfully push through with it
by dint of hard work and an optimistic attitude. The two
upright pianos for this project were moved from his
residence in Las Piñas using a borrowed truck from Vibal
Press and the help of Las Piñas residents and Vargas
Museum personnel. Support for the artist’s living
expenses and the wages of the piano technicians was
difficult to generate. Which brings me to this question:
Is conceptual art difficult to comprehend because it is
semantic rather than emotive?
***Helen
Yu-Rivera is Associate Professor in Art Studies at the
University of the Philippines in Diliman. Reamillo will
hold an artist’s talk at the Vargas Museum on July 4,
from 2:30 to 4:30 pm. For information, contact the UP
Vargas Museum at 928-1927, 928-1925, vargasmuseum@gmail.com. |
