Wandering Archives Across the Pacific (Manila, Philippines - 2011)

title wall	exhibit in a suitcase	inspection at the museum	by Chris "Jack" Carraher
detail, by Chris "Jack" Carraher	by E.G. Crichton	by E.G. Crichton	by Helen Park
installation view	by John Q.	by Kim Anno	reception

Wandering Archives Across the Pacific was a project based on connection between artists in two cities and archives that wandered across the Pacific in both directions. The context was the international art exhibition Nothing to Declare that unfolded at several locations in Manila, Philippines during Fall, 2011.

For “Nothing to Declare”, I carried eight creative “delegate” archives in a suitcase to build an installation called Mga Sinupang Lagalag (Wandering Archives) at the Vargas Museum in Quezon City. This work embodied the relationships of eight artists to the archival artifacts of eight lives. While in Manila, I met Giney Villar and Beth Angsioco, owners of Adarna Food and Culture Restaurant, who contributed photographs and correspondence between two gay Filipino men from the early 1900’s. These new archives traveled back across the Pacific to become guest delegate archives at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco.

EXHIBITION STATEMENT for Mga Sinupang Lagalag:

Each of these Wandering Archives represents an individual who in some way lived a life outside of heterosexual norms. Each artist has excavated both tangible traces and imaginary gaps in the record to interpret a life. These archives of the dead crossed the Pacific in a suitcase to become guest immigrants at the Vargas Museum. Historically, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people have wandered in particular ways, finding each other through underground routes of site and recognition. Because of the nature of the closet, these lives are frequently invisible, both in life and death. For people whose traces are so often erased the archive is a way of taking charge of collective memory.

COLLABORATING ARTISTS:

Kim Anno, Tammy Rae Carland, Chris “Jack” Carraher, E.G. Crichton, Jeanette Lazam, Rudy Lemcke, Helen Park, John Q (Weslie Chenault, Andy Ditzler and Joey Orr), Tina Takemoto, Giney Villar and Beth Angsioco.