Body.Work is a group show featuring Tekla Tamoria, Jezzel Wee, and Marz Aglipay. Their works respond to Alfonso Manalastas’ poetry collection, Factory of Alleged Virtues. Apart from the print installation I also facilitated a workshop in relation to the exhibition.
My inclusion in this project was very last minute. I normally need months of preparation for most exhibitions. What convinced me to participate was when I found myself resonating with Alfonso’s poem “Country for nothings” that deeply resonated with me as a journalist. I went into production with a mindset of a journalist trying to beat a deadline even though I am not necessarily writing a story, rather illuminating the imagery that felt most resonant to his poem.
Prints
I came up with two editions Sign Off and Farewell to Analog that are presented against the backdrop installation Residual Media, an ode to shifting media relevance. The works reflect on the waning influence of newspapers and the impending discontinuation of free-to-air analog television, set to take place in 2026 in the Philippines.
The anxiety surrounding this transition is articulated in Alfonso’s poem Country of Nothings.
The work is closed with a documented dismantling of the installation work
Performance
Residual Media is an installation-performance that stages its own dismantling as a visual eulogy to the impending phaseout of analog television in the Philippines. As digital broadcast is set to take full effect, the work gestures toward Filipino households that continue to rely on analog TV sets—not only as appliances, but as long-standing sources of information and connection to public life. Once the transition is complete, these sets are rendered obsolete, raising questions of access, loss, and displacement.
The video documentation opens with a quote by Antonio Gramsci—“The old world is dying, the new one struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” I selected this line as a reflection of the present moment, and of the looming absence of television news for households that remain dependent on analog sets. This framing extends the work’s ongoing engagement with Alfonso Manalastas’ poem Country of Nothings, to which the installation directly responds.
Residual Media is composed of wheat-pasted woodblock and rubbercut prints, produced with the explicit intention of eventual destruction. This built-in ephemerality mirrors the fragile lifespan of the media forms it references, foregrounding disappearance, erasure, and the residue left behind by technological shifts.
The performance features Body.Work artist and curator Tekla Tamoria.
Body.Work Workshop
A print-workshop and poetry reading event was held during the run of the exhibition.
Watch: watch a reel from the event.
Look: Behind the scenes of the exhibition.
I would like to continue exploring the possibilities of print. Invite me to exhibitions that respond to books or similar subjects.
