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B I G NE W M OV E ME N T S How Fernando Zobel & Co. Are Disrupting the Landscape

RESTORER OR D E S T R OY E R ?

Jerry Acuzarr and the Casas He Collects

T HE LE F T W IN G Designer Eric Paras Opens up on His Years in the Underground

THE BOMBING O F A N AT I O N Egg Fiasco and How Graiti Art Got Legit ROGUE MAGAZINE / 250 PESOS

A S LI C E O F LIFE A Granddaughter Recalls the Great Cartoonist Larry Alcala

T HE S E C O ND C O MIN G O F

ANNICKA DOLONIUS G O O D NI G H T A ND G O O D L U C K Manila by Night Through the Eyes of Jake Verzosa Veejay Villafranca Carlo Gabuco Miguel Nacianceno Geric Cruz Geloy Concepcion

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COVER STORY

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SHE’S COME UNDONE From an inebriated night at a Casa San Miguel fete to the beaches of Baler, Aurora, Apocalypse Child director Mario Cornejo describes the process of enchantment that comes with getting to know the singular, incomparable Annicka Dolonius.

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PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOHANN BONA; CELINE TOP AND TOPSHOP LEGGINGS

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Fernando Zobel De Ayala, at the 35th floor of Tower One, Ayala Triangle.

FEATURES

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MONUMENTS MEN We’ve rounded up today’s best designers, developers, and architects to show what happens when brilliant people work to put the people irst.

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LORD OF THE CASAS Jerry Acuzar has been criticized for exploiting heritage structures for proit, while some camps laud him as an unlikely champion of cultural preservation. Jerome Gomez weighs the scales.

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THE BOMBING OF A NATION Speaking to Jay Pacena and street artist Egg Fiasco, Paolo Enrico Melendez traces how Philippine street art, which began as an underground art form, rose to eminence.

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THE YEARS WHEN HE WAS U.G. Before becoming a household name in Philippine interior design, Eric Paras spent his youth in the underground movement. He recounts his politically charged past with Ces Rodriguez.

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GIRL’S GOT SPARKLE Jam Pascual attempts to understand how Pamela Bahre Ebensperger, former model turned jeweler, came to discover her own ideal of beauty.

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IN THE CLAWS OF LIGHT With help from photographer and guest curator Jake Verzosa, Rogue portrays Manila, a city with an ininite amount of undiscovered corners, at a time of transition.

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THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL In celebration of her irst one-woman art show, ex-beauty queen and bold star Maria Isabel Lopez speaks to Regina Abuyuan about how she played the game of survival in an unforgiving industry.

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QUESTION EVERYTHING Devi de Veyra travels to Amanpulo Resort to gate crash the 50th birthday of Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal, dispelling the kitchen king’s aura of celebrity in the process.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY CYRUS PANGANIBAN

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Sep Verboom’s FAN lamps for Livable Products.

SECTIONS

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AGENDA he Cultural Center of the Philippines celebrates King of Komiks Mars Ravelo’s birth centennial with a landmark exhibit; literary veteran Krip Yuson’s third novel is an opus born from two decades of toil; Chef Nicco Santos explores the nuances of Peranakan cuisine with Hey Handsome.

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SPACE Belgian designer Sep Verboom pushes for social and environmental reform through his work with found junk material; Hacienda Crafts enlists the help of Negros Occidental’s farmers to create designer baskets; At Maculangan’s shelf is a haven of exotic paraphernalia.

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THE EYE Kix Suarez draws inspiration from the grit and grime of Manila for his clothing label he Artisan; perfumer Francis Kurkdijan treats fragrance as a ine art and, in his words, “an emotional medium”; Roger Dubuis is perhaps the most innovative watch brand you’ve never heard of.

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THE SLANT Ana Alcala remembers the legacy of her grandfather, legendary cartoonist Larry Alcala; Julius Villanueva illustrates—literally—the life of an independent comics creator; Paolo Enrico Melendez relects on his love-hate relationship with Manila.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY AARON LAPEIRRE

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[ [ [ N I [ I P Q I V G S Q

Executive Editor JEROME GOMEZ Managing Editor JACS T. SAMPAYAN Design Editor DEVI DE VEYRA

Associate Editor PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ

Agenda Section Editor JAM PASCUAL Editor at Large TEDORO LOCSIN, JR.

ART Senior Art Director KARL CASTRO

Junior Designer MARK SANTIAGO

Photographer at Large MARK NICDAO

Photographer STEVE TIRONA

On the Cover Photographed by Johann Bona Styled by Pam Quiñones Makeup by Archibald Tolentino for NARS Hair by Francis Guintu for Cynos Inside Hair Care Art Direction by Karl Castro Stylist Assisted by Maita Baello, Alexine Castillo, Mel Sy, Shark Tanael Photographer Assisted by Adelaine Dela Rosa, Norman Mendoza, Lancer Salva Digital Imaging by Kate Field Annicka Dolonius wears a H&M bodysuit and Alaïa shoes

Contributing Writers REGINA ABUYUAN, ANA ALCAL A, MIO BORROMEO, MARIO CORNEJO, JUDE DEFENSOR, PATRICK GOZON, EMIL HOFILEÑA, STEF JUAN, INO MANALO, MARIE ANNABELLE MARQUEZ, JOSEPH PASCUAL, CHANDRA PEPINO, CES RODRIGUEZ, JULIUS VILL ANUEVA Contributing Photographers & Artists JOHANN BONA, EDRIC CHEN, GELOY CONCEPCION, GERIC CRUZ, CARLO GABUCO, ADRIAN PANADERO, CYRUS PANGANIBAN, JOSEPH PASCUAL, JASON QUIBIL AN, MILO SOGUECO, SONNY THAKUR, JAKE VERZOSA, VEEJAY VILL AFRANCA

ERRATUM In our September 2016 issue, the image in our Table of Contents should have read: “Kowboy Santos wears a bespoke silk organdy barong from Tesoro’s and an orange shirt by redslim08.” In our Costume Naćional feature, Kowboy Santos’s silver repoussé necklaces and Kiddo Cosio’s silver repoussé Bulol belt are

by Wynn Wynn Ong. The following credits should have also been given: Makeup by Jim Ross. Hair by Raymond Galang. We apologize for these oversights.

Interns CARLO NEMO, AYA DANCEL

PUBLISHING Publisher VICKY MONTENEGRO / vicky.montenegro@roguemedia.ph Associate Publisher ANI A. HIL A / ani.hila@roguemedia.ph Publishing Assistant MADS TEOTICO / mads.teotico@roguemedia.ph Senior Advertising Sales Director MINA GARA / mina.gara@roguemedia.ph Account Managers VELU ACABADO, FAYE DELIGENTE Advertising Traffic Officer & Production Coordinator MYRA CABALUNA Associate Circulation Manager RAINIER S. BARIA Circulation Supervisor MARK ROLAND LEAL Circulation Assistant JERICO ALDANA

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Dispatch Supervisors ERIC GARCIA, JIMUEL TATAD Controller EDEN G. ARGONZA Credit & Collection Officer DODGIE OCAMPO Finance Analyst JEMMALYN LUCERO HR Supervisor RUSCHEL REYES Administrative Supervisor DEANNA GUEVARRA

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SHIELL A AGUIL AR, YL A PATRICIA G. ALCANTARA, JAY AMANTE OF BL ANC GALLERY, CHEL OF DASHING DIVA,

THIS EDITION. OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS MAGAZINE ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF ROGUE MAGAZINE. THIS MAGAZINE

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ISSUE 103

THE EDITOR’S LETTER O c to b e r 2 0 16

“Sa Maynila—wow, pare, sumasabog ‘yan, whang, kzzt, pow, ahh! Ang galing, pare, ang galing. Ikot nang ikot ‘yan, bira nang bira. Kaya kailangan ikaw, sakay nang sakay, kundi maiiwan ka—kundi pati ikaw sasabog! Kailangan, mabilis ka, sakay nang sakay, trip lang nang trip. Okay ba, pare?”— Manila By Night here’s something about walking the streets of Quiapo that attaches your feet back to earth. About a night in Adriatico’s Bar 1951 that makes you feel alive, safe and at home. About getting lost in the chaos of Recto, its dim honky-tonks, its decrepit theater houses, and seeing its sex workers getting ready for the day’s transactions, that tells you that the glass and snazz of BGC is a stranger’s picture of the city, and that the real Manila is this.

Brocka’s Manila. Bernal’s city after dark. his issue is a love letter to this Manila. he city that assaults you in all the ways possible.

Where you’re watching everything happening at once, and while you’re at it, guarding your phone and the contents of your pockets with your life.

You’ve never truly lived life in the edge if you haven’t lived in this town. All your senses are lung open and you are both very much in the present and, for someone like me who only gets the chance to visit, very much in the past.

It takes me back to Sunday mornings at Luneta with family, stepping on the Manila Bay stones and soaking our feet in the water. To hearing mass at Sta. Cruz church often followed

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by a trip to nearby Good Earth Emporium in Avenida, or a lunch of fried chicken and pansit at Ramon Lee in Ronquillo Street. To going with my mother to her Avon lady afairs in a house cum beauty parlor in Tomas Pinpin Street in Chinatown, the Chan C Bros light store just across it. Or collecting checks for her in some garment factory near Escolta, passing by the last remaining shoe shine boys on its sidewalks.

In college, I’d walk the streets of Recto (where I found a copy of Nick Joaquin’s Portrait of An Artist as Filipino, one of his homages to the city), and being awakened by the concentrated smell of pee and rugby and grime as I go down the stairs of the LRT station in Doroteo Jose. I would cut class and escape to the National Library in Kalaw (reading all their local magazines is partly to blame re the career I chose to stick with). In the 90s, it was all about working at the Port Area, and nights out in Malate which was then in the last years of its bohemian heydays. Finally, inding myself back in Recto during EDSA Dos to walk toward Mendiola, shaking in the knees, holding a friend’s hand, knowing all too well that the dospor-dos-carrying Erap fans are just around the corner ready to come pouncing.

Several years back when I was working on a story on Manila with the photographer Steve Tirona, across the Sta. Cruz church, under the Chinatown arch, just as Steve was about to click his camera for a portrait of the tour guide Ivan Man Dy, an old man fell on the street, his face hitting the ground irst. When we got to him

after we recovered from our shock, the old man’s gums were bleeding, and so was his forehead which seemed to already have previous bruises just barely healed. He couldn’t even bring himself to stand. He must’ve been really hungry and was on his way home to bring the plastic bag of pansit he had with him to his family. No police in sight, although there was a police station a few steps away. A few young men from some security school came to help. Everybody seemed ready to pull peso bills out of their pockets but nobody seemed willing to bring him to the hospital. And so we just called a pedicab and asked the driver to bring him to a nearby clinic. I felt that pang of guilt as soon as the driver pedaled away, and as soon as I realized I had chosen to stay.

Manila does that to you. Whether it’s partying away in Malate or being intrigued by the double features in Avenida, marching to Malacañang or going inside the narrow, potentially dangerous eskinitas of Quiapo and stumbling upon a bootleg DVD that has an infant’s face confronting an erect penis—it forces you out of your mall of a world, grabs you by the collar of your cotton pique shirt, looks you straight in the eye to ask how much you are willing to give, and far you are willing to go.

Je ome Gomez Executive Editor

PHOTOGRAPH BY JR AGRA

Manila is in the heart

Celebrate 75 years of iconic design, from pioneering modernist vision to bold contemporary designs for home and office. Always timeless. Always true. www.knolleurope.com

GF Fort Victoria 5th Ave., Corner 23rd Street, Fort Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, Metro Manila, Philippines T. +632 734 3243/ +632 828 8722 info@livinginnovations.ph

ISSUE 103

THE GUEST LIST O c to b e r 2 0 16

Cyrus Panganiban is a freelance portrait, beauty, fashion, corporate, and advertising photographer. He credits classes at New York’s International Center of Photography and a workshop with the late multi-awardwinning American portrait photographer Mary Ellen Mark for honing his talent. He contributes to various publications, including Esquire, Garage, Mega, Northern Living, Southern Living, and Red. his year, he opened Dark Horse Photography Studio in Quezon City.

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Jake Verzosa is a freelance photographer based in Manila. hrough his work as a fashion and commercial photographer, he has expanded his craft, explored many destinations around Southeast Asia, and exhibited in Asia and Europe. Of his extensive body of work, he considers his documentaries and portraits as his most personal creations.

His photography book, he Last Tattooed Women of Kalinga, was published by Silverlens and launched at Paris Photo 2014.

Johann Bona is a professional photographer previously based in Toronto, Ontario.

Of Bona’s works, Juxtapoz wrote, “his photographs manage to capture equal parts sex appeal and mischief, his beautiful models both embracing and satirizing their own commercialized hyperfemininity.” His works have also appeared in GQ Brasil, Nylon Guys, and UmnO Magazine.

Carlo Gabuco is a visual artist and a freelance photographer.

His works have been exhibited locally at Finale Art File and the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and internationally at the House of Matahati in Kuala Lumpur, and the Artesan Gallery + Studio in Singapore.

Milo Sogueco is an award-winning ilmmaker and photographer. Sogueco also actively supports independent cinema through his positions at the Movie and Television Review and Classiication Board and Quezon City Film Development Commission.

Veejay Villafranca is an award-winning photographer. He is the recipient of the 2008 Ian Parry Scholarship grant and the irst Filipino to be selected in the 2013 Joop Swart Masterclass program. He has been published globally in International Herald Tribune, he Sunday Times, he Guardian, Bloomberg Businessweek, and World Policy Report.

He is represented by Global Assignment

by Getty Images (London) and Asia Motion (Asia).

Mario Cornejo has been directing since 2002, but people only started paying him to do it in 2006.

He’s made three feature ilms with his girlfriend, Monster Jimenez, as well as numerous television commercials. His ilm, Apocalypse Child, won four Pylon trophies at the hird QCinema International Film Festival, one Star Award, one Gawad Urian Award, and one award from the Film Academy of the Philippines.

ONLY THE GOOD STUFF.

O c tob e r 2 0 16

E DI T E D BY

JAM PASCUAL

AGENDA

ISSUE NO.

103

F O O D + E N T E R TA I N M E N T + C U L T U R E + T R AV E L

In the world of Pinoy komiks, Mars Ravelo, who would’ve turned a century old this year, was pioneer and king, having been one of the first Filipino cartoonists to truly captivate the national imagination WORDS BY EMIL HOFILEÑA

HEROES ARE FROM

IMAGES COURTESY OF THE CULTURAL CENTER OF THE PHILIPPINES, THE VISUAL ARTS AND MUSEUM DIVISION

AGENDA ART

TIMELESSNESS IMPLIES DECADES’ worth of weathering storms—of withstanding criticism and proving one’s relevance to an ever-changing world. As Philippine art continues to evolve, Mars Ravelo’s name remains essential in the public consciousness and in the way Philippine pop culture has been shaped. With the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ tribute exhibit, Mars Ravelo Reinterpreted, it’s clear that the King of Komiks has truly earned his place in history as one of Philippine art’s old masters.

Born on October 9, 1916 in General Trias, Cavite, Ravelo was no stranger to the struggle of making ends meet. After dropping out of high school, he found himself working menial jobs and facing rejection after rejection from various publishing companies who were not impressed with his characters. After inally getting regular work at Bulaklak, Ravelo had a falling out with his editors. He eventually exited the magazine — losing the rights to his superheroine, Varga, in the process.

But a life of hardship demands a person of perseverance to resist it, and Ravelo exhibited the kind of determination that would be seen in the likes of his creations Captain Barbell, Dyesebel, and Flash Bomba, among many others. Even after leaving Varga behind, he managed to rework

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MAN OF ACTION

Clockwise from top: Mariano Ching, Untitled, Acryclic and Pyrograph on Wood, 110” x 154” x 2.7”; Leeroy New, Still Life with Two Flash Bomba, plastic toys, size variable; Maruja, Illustrated by Rico Rival, Pilipino Komiks Magasin, Sepember 28, 1967, 24.5 x 34.8 cm. Previous page: Ernest Concepcion, D for Divinity, oil, enamel, and gypsy, 96” x 72” on canvas.

the character into the country’s most resilient and recognizable superhero, Darna. Ravelo’s exciting characters and stories quickly turned him into a pop Philippine icon, with his inluence felt not just in the world of comics under titles like Liwayway and Kampeon, but in the local ilm industry as well.

Even with all his success, Ravelo stayed close to his people. While he acknowledged the similarities between some of his creations and Western comic book superheroes, his characters spoke in the local vernacular and represented everyday Filipinos and their struggles. he path he carved was unique in that his art served as an escape, but it still dared to face the diiculties of the ordinary.

Together with forums and ilm screenings, Mars Ravelo Reinterpreted not only celebrates the King of Komiks’ centennial, but also honors how he helped legitimize Philippine comics as an art form. he exhibit features over a dozen contemporary artists, from Mariano Ching to Ernest Concepcion, Leeroy New to MM Yu, individually selected to reinterpret a speciic character by Ravelo. he show breathes new life into Ravelo’s works through painting, sculpture, and various other media, bringing the King of Komiks back to the present in full force.

MARS RAVELO REINTERPRETED IS ONGOING, AND W ILL RUN UNTIL NOVEMBER 13 AT THE CULTURAL CENTER OF THE PHILIPPINES. VISIT CULTURALCENTER.GOV.PH FOR MORE DETAILS.

AGENDA BOOKS

TROPICAL QUIXOTIC

Literary heavyweight Krip Yuson’s latest novel, out this month from Anvil, pushes the limits of magical realism WORDS BY MIO BORROMEO PHOTOS BY EDRIC CHEN

TWENTY YEARS IS how long it took Krip Yuson to churn out his latest novel. To put that in perspective, that’s also how long it took George R.R. Martin to write ive Game of hrones books.

Likewise, let’s not forget that the cumulative page count of Martin’s epic is somewhere in the thousands. Krip’s new book?

One hundred sixty pages.

It’s unfair to shoehorn Mr. Yuson’s work into this comparison, but the point is to present the output with a certain scale. What incredible story has seized the imagination of the Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café novelist for two whole decades?

Yuson had originally written the irst chapter of he Music Child & he Mahjong Queen as a standalone short story. He remembers having written it while in Scotland on fellowship, speciically around the same time his youngest daughter was born with a caulilower ear. Unsure now of the jump it took to translate this aliction to iction—the title’s Music Child, Julio, has no caulilower ears but has a gift for music—he nevertheless recalls immediately submitting the work for publication, fetching prizes and appearances here and there. It was only in 2008 that Yuson began to expand the story in order to enter the Man Asian Literary Prize, making him one of two Filipinos to be shortlisted that year.

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HOW TO BUILD AN UNBELIEVABLE WORLD

In order to properly pull of magic realism, Yuson says, “You have to take a stepping stone approach. You can’t just hit someone with a marvel. [...] You kind of have to gnaw away at the disbelief of the reader.”

(Miguel Syjuco, the other Filipino, would take home the honor.)

But Yuson admitted that the manuscript needed more time for it to become the novel he would publish eight years later. “here were weaknesses in the structure,” he said. “I needed at least a chapter and a half more… A number of editors expressed interest… And I said, I dunno, let’s wait muna. I’m not satisied with my manuscript.” In Yuson’s care, the book grew

organically, like a real child, reaching maturity over time. he inal product has the marks of a fully realized project.

When he Music Child & he Mahjong Queen begins, foreign journalist Lance Blume is tangled up in tedious corporate controversies and tracking developments on the muro-ami issue, which in 1995 is but a dying story. His interests quickly shift to follow rumors of aboriginal hairstring iddlers tucked into rural Cebu, and shift

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AGENDA BOOKS

COME TOGETHER

The author at his home, posing in front of a collection of liquor cases.

Bythetimewemeetthebook’s MahjongQueen—humorouslynamed VilmaSantos—thebookisasweet balancebetweenfactandfancy. even further when he gets wind of a wondrously gifted child also hidden in the countryside, whose every utterance is said to be musical, whose whistles and chants efortlessly mimic the sounds of nature. Blume arranges to meet with the child and his father, and eventually becomes a irsthand witness of the escalating conlict between the aboriginal tribe and encroaching industrial poachers. his irst chapter of the novel continuously attempts to escape its grounding in heavy realism with a dreamlike second-person segment on traveling between Manila and Cebu and the very premise the whole story presents (as Yuson admitted, “I don’t think Cebu ever had those little people!”). But as the novel goes on, it manages to make that light into the incredible. Chapter 2 begins with a resolute warning: “Nobody will ever believe that story.” By the time we meet the book’s Mahjong Queen— humorously named Vilma Santos—the book is a genuine practice of magic realism, a sweet balance between fact and fancy.

It’s in this tradition that Yuson allows readers to consider the issues at hand—the conlict that Blume witnesses is revisited in various forms later on—but enables them to imagine a world in which there is a kind of resolution, even if it is wholly unbelievable. It’s the sort of iction that couldn’t have had better timing, even if began long, long ago.

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BEYOND TIME AND SPACE Part of what defines Krip Yuson’s storytelling prowess is his deft manipulation of time and history WORDS BY ANGELICA Y. YANG

GREAT PHILIPPINE JUNGLE ENERGY CAFÉ (1988) A sumptuous feast for the senses, this book is Yuson’s version of a historical wonderland during the Martial Law era. Amidst the landscape of revolution, protagonist Leon Kilat, a man of many trades, spends time inside a café filled with folkloric and historical icons.

VOYEURS & SAVAGES (1998) In his second novel, Yuson juxtaposes scenes of past and present as he talks about America’s objectification of Filipino ethnic minorities.

Through detailed historical accounts and letters, protagonist Meynard Aguinaldo’s vivid experiences draw the reader back to the 1904 St. Louis World Exposition, exposing a sinister contrast between the colonizer and colonized.

AGENDA NIGHTLIFE

LEGEND HAS IT Images of the past and perceptions of the present come together at the Poblacion bar and restaurant Alamat WORDS AND PHOTOS BY JOSEPH PASCUAL

AS A SMALL, yellow moth glows on the second loor of a building, another light shines on one of Poblacion, Makati’s quieter streets. Welcome to Alamat Filipino Pub & Deli.

Translated as “legend,” Alamat makes a point to echo the magic of its name. Worn wooden stairs lead up to a glowing wrought iron door. he bar sits on half of an uninished jeepney shell. Sadako, Ultraman, a kapre, and a manananggal greet you from a corner as you enter. Star-shaped capiz bulbs light up the veranda.

Street food comes plated on traditional cookware: Tusok-Tusok (homemade ish balls, squid balls, and queck-queck) is presented neatly on a kawali, and Tinolang Tahong (mussels cooked in Filipino craft ale) is served in a kaldero. Drinks range from a bottle of lambanog to cocktails mixed with sampaloc, calamansi, or santol. Alamat’s familiar-tasting fare and easy, unpretentious ambiance make you feel like you’re hanging out at a friend’s ancestral home. his efort to assimilate the past with the present, and the local with the international, extends from the menu to the crowd. Like most

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MaybeAlamat encouragesabetter, friendlierworldfullof drunkpeopleandbadly keptsecrets.Butbadly keptsecretsarehow legendsstart,afterall.

HALCYON DAZE

The glow shining from Alamat’s liquor counter comes from a neon red sign that reads “CRAFT BEER FOR THE PEOPLE.” Below it, a row of taps that pump out the best local beer brands, from Pedro to Joe’s Brew.

places in this part of town, Alamat’s patrons are a colorful mix of girls with good jewelry, boys with guitars, expats with cell phones, and foreigners with the Filipinos who brought them there.

Owner Jun Sabayton might appear once in a while, to join Kakoy Legaspi and his guitar in a performance, or Dong Abay. While some places change depending on the people they attract, Alamat does the opposite, keeping a hazy, twilight atmosphere that mellows the loud and relaxes the uptight. Maybe it encourages a better, friendlier world full of drunk people and badly kept secrets.

Badly kept secrets are how legends start, after all. here is an immutable charm to the folklore we share, from the creatures and food whose origins we pass down to future generations, to the television shows and other nostalgia we retell and call our own. Alamat (5666 Don Pedro Street, Poblacion, Makati; 0917-530-2580) roots itself where these stories end, possibly to accommodate the shifting crowd inside.

“Isa kang alamat,” reads the graiti on the stairway outside. Above it, the bar it leads to may in one form or another be exactly that.

AGENDA FOOD

LOOKING GOOD Chef Nicco Santos steps up his fusion cuisine game with Hey Handsome WORDS BY CHANDRA PEPINO / PHOTOS BY PATRICK DIOKNO

HOW DO YOU follow up an incredibly successful culinary venture—recognized by the likes of Condé Nast as one of the best in the world— without it morphing into the restaurant version of a less talented younger sibling? Nicco Santos, executive chef of Your Local, sought to defy the sophomore slump when he opened Hey Handsome (G/F Net Park Building, 5th Avenue, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig; 946-3815), an homage to Peranakan fare, in August. his is the Peranakan story: Chinese migrants who formed settlements in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia inter-married with the locals, and as cultures merged, so did lavors. Whether dishes of this origin would translate well with the Filipino palate or not concerned Santos and his young team of chefs. Initial apprehensions aside, they found a spot to touch down then set up shop.

Hey Handsome’s interiors are a welcome break from the usual setup—the open kitchen allows for easy interaction with the people who prepare your food. “We’re building a family over here,” shares chef de cuisine Quenee Vilar, “so why would the kitchen crew have to hide?”

Santos and company succeed at developing a compact menu featuring a bevy of Southeast Asian tastes, though the dishes are far and away a step up from Your Local in terms of

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technicality and preparation. he Bebek Penyet, a Peking duck paired with Malaysian herb rice and duck egg, takes half a day to prepare: the duck is dry-cured, cooked sous vide, and then deep-fried before it hits your table. he poisonous buah keluak fruit that tops a bed of nasi ulam and lamb stew is blanched in water every four hours for three days until it is edible. he Laap Phet is an expert pairing of khao man rice and perfectly crisped minced duck. And the Beetroot Paneer is a symphony of the sharp sweetness of homemade yogurt, the exquisite assemblage of quinoa tabbouleh, and the subtle density of Indian cheese. he strange names are intimidating only until you take your irst bite— from then on, the lavors are comfortable and wildly harmonious.

In the highly inventive realm of fusion cuisine, authenticity doesn’t have to fade into the background. “We wanted a fresh take on food that you don’t usually ind around here,” Vilar says of their dishes. “But most important, we wanted Peranakan cuisine to be approachable.

Fusion cuisine is a cuisine for everyone.”

It’s quite itting then that the restaurant is named after the catchphrase of Singaporean food stall vendors looking to attract hungry customers.

Hey Handsome is deinitely worth a double take and second helping.

LOCAL ATTRACTION

Top, from left: The Beetroot Paneer, the Laap Phet, and the Buah Keluak, the dish whose poisonous fruit of the same name requires a special blanching process to make it safe to eat. Above: Hey Handsome’s open kitchen.

AGENDA POLITICS

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DU30 Let’s be fair: the minds of hardcore DU30 fans don’t get the credit they deserve. So we’ve tried to study the way they think, in a charitable act of due process WORDS BY PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ / ILLUSTRATION BY ADRIAN PANADERO

MOTOR CORTEX

SENSORY CORTEX

The HQ of movement.

When you successfully balance multiple sectors to change a protest vote into a coordinated mass action, that’s a motor cortex win. When you extend a conciliatory hand to progressive orgs while defanging regulators charged with safeguarding the public space, that’s a motor cortex fail.

The part that makes sense of sensations. Kicks in when trying to understand the nature of an object or stimulus. Did you just hear the report of a handgun, or the echoing bang of peace and order? It’s all in the sensory cortex.

OCCIPITAL LOBE PARIETAL LOBE FRONTAL LOBE The bit that regulates the big stuf: emotions, logic, and foresight. Active when appreciating the sincerity of a leader during times of calamity, which is just what we need; passive when antagonizing intergovernmental bodies, which is just what we don’t.

26 O C T O B E R 2016

TEMPORAL LOBE Memory, both long and short term. If the appointments and pardons and talk of absolving former dictators are anything to go by, this part is totally shot.

Makes sure we can understand the world. Appoint a true grassroots organizer to the social welfare department: Sure. Defund that same entire department: Why not?

Additionally, handles symbols such as numbers and words.

So it’s also the part of our brain that activates when reading a credit rating report. Or deactivates, depending on how much of a tool for the ruling oligarchy you consider those things. Stop destabilizing the Philippines, economists!

Controls visual functions.

Those waves of light that you perceive as blue and red? Occipital lobe! That narco war you see as necessary even during a time of low drug incidents per capita? Occipital lobe, too! Or a play straight out of the wag the dog handbook.

We’re not too sure.

O c tob e r 2 0 16

E DI T E D BY

DEVI DE VEYRA

SPACE

ISSUE NO.

103

DESIGN + INTERIORS + ARCHITECTURE + TECHNOLOGY

For designer Sep Verboom, finding the extraordinary means looking at the commonplace.

This outlook enabled him to provide livelihood for communities in Cebu’s shipyards and junkyards.

WORDS BY MARIE ANNABELLE MARQUEZ PHOTOGRAPHS BY AARON LAPEIRRE

BELGIAN CONNECTION

SPACE DESIGN

ofeachpiece

The FAN lamps come in three models-a floorlamp available in two heights, as well as a pendant edition. The ROPE stool is part of a growing family of recycled ropebased items from Verboom’s company.

FOR HIS FINAL thesis, Belgian designer Sep Verboom traveled with his friend Matt Hoogewys in search of art disciplines with a social product approach. In his six months living in the Philippines, Verboom created the FAN Lamp, a collection of electric fan grills from junk shops in Cebu City refashioned with locally woven wicker into lighting ixtures. Hoogewys was the irst to purchase a inished unit. hus marked the start of Livable Products (livableproducts.org), a social design initiative where creative reuse lies at the heart of each piece.

“Our idea is simple. We screen an environment for interesting materials,” says Verboom. his approach is evident in Livable Products’ aesthetic: a fresh but gentle contrast of shapes, tones, and textures with a touch of the homespun charm of upcycling, ultimately informed by social context.

In his next foray, Verboom was introduced to an elderly entrepreneur in Lapu-Lapu City whose rope-making trade had grown from family business to community livelihood. “Rope-making has been a craft of theirs for years using natural abaca ibers,” says Verboom. “he communities

30 O C T O B E R 2016

started to explore using old synthetic shipping ropes. hey found them at the piers—free material. By using these ropes in another context, we made an important statement.”

ROPE Hope began with a collection of stools and lamps using the reclaimed rope, which undergoes a tedious process of disassembly, washing, and rebraiding. he ROPE Stool features a cork-shaped seat of rolled rope itted atop a minimalist metal frame, while the ROPE Lamp articulates the conical top and wide brim of the Philippine sarok hat.

In 2016, Verboom’s vision of using the ropes on a larger scale was a natural it with Belgian rug producer Papilio, whose designs use unconventional material such as bicycle tires. After the ropes are processed in the Philippines, they are woven into lat rugs at a workshop in India.

Recalling the simplicity of Scandinavian design, the ROPE Rug bears a layered weave of gradient shades in a neutral palette, bordered by fringe dip-dyed in a pop of bright color.

“We are reaching a new revolution of industries that see the value in transforming discarded material into design products,” says Verboom.

THE

ROGUE SHELFIE

AT MACULANGAN On the photographer’s shelf, there are reminders of friendships, family, and sojourns, and clues to his interests.

If you look closer, you will see that he has both a playful and dark side.

3

1 2 5 4

7

8

1 THE VAKUL IS the Ivatan’s traditional raincoat made from Voyavoy grass, purchased during a visit to Batanes. During his trips, At would scour the markets and other local stores to search for local crafts.

2 THE GUNS BELONG to At’s better half, Katya Guerrero, part of a show where the two were featured artists. he photographer’s manner of display reveal his playful and provocative side.

3 HE IS BIG on baskets, as you can see. Except for the one at far right, all of these come from various provinces in the Philippines. A DIY kinda guy, to At made the shelf together with his loyal assistant, John Kenneth Ratin.

4 THE MAGAZINES include titles where his works have been published.

His books are mostly about photography, art, crafts and some odd preoccupations: he Anarchist’s Cookbook contains instruction on “pa’no gumawa ng bomba, while Pin-up Girls are girls na nakabomba.”

32 O C T O B E R 2016

5 A GIFT FROM his mother while they both lived in Italy, At uses this as a radio/ampliier and it’s hooked up to his computer. he piece is perhaps about 17 years old, a sentimental favorite that he shipped all the way from Milan years ago.

6 THIS HEGALONG WAS crafted by the late T’boli master artisan, Mail.

It’s a gift from photographer Neal Oshima when they worked together in Mindanao. It was just one of many stops for the two who traveled all over the Philippines for an assignment many years ago.

7 FILMS, TRANSPARENCIES AND NEGATIVES from his early works are catalogued in plastic containers, while digital iles are stored in CDs. 8 KATYA’S COLLECTION OF native fabrics include some made by Lang Dulay, a weaver recognized as a National Living Treasure by the National Commission for the Culture and Arts.

PHOTO BY AT MACULANGAN

6

SPACE FURNITURE

GRAY SCALE Sexy and chic, gray is the modern home’s leitmotif, a neutral color that blends well with just about any hue. Update your space with this on-trend color by simply choosing a few key pieces to which you can add whatever suits your fancy.

Fade chrome pendant lights, by Tom Dixon for MOs Design

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Avi Graphite cushion, Crate & Barrel

Cloud Atlas sofa, Diesel for Moroso

Whirl Swivel Carousel chair, Crate & Barrel

Bout de canapé BIJOU, Roche Bobois

SEE SHOPLIST (PAGE 122) FOR STORE INFORMATION

SPACE DESIGN

FAIR TRADE Two years after tapping local farmers to level up from brooms to designer mats, Hacienda Crafts launches its next green project to a receptive market WORDS BY PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ PHOTO BY PATRICK DIOKNO

HACIENDA CRAFTS HAS been busy. It’s been rushing from one trade fair to another. he Manila Fame Show. he Manila Furniture Show. he Philippine International Furniture Show. All to build market enthusiasm for two things: perennial grass and bottle shards.

In partnership with the Association of Negros Producers and the city government of Silay, Negros Occidental, Hacienda Crafts works with the farmers of Patag in the North Negros Natural Park to fashion designer baskets from tiger grass, locally known as udjong.

Udjong is commonly used by resident farmers to make brooms, which are branded under a diferent and distant northern Philippine city altogether. But the four artisans of Hacienda Crafts, following tutelage supported by the United Nations Development Programme, weave the grass into trim baskets that evoke a kind of pastoral order: organic yet organized.

“We wanted to put more value into their eforts,” Hacienda Crafts creative director Ina Gaston says of the venture, which began two years ago. he products were initially available through Cebu’s Holistic Coalition of the Willing (HoliCOW) galley store. But the road show is now in full force to build a market for the designer baskets.

And this isn’t about volume. Gaston says that, early on, her group decided not to compete with the big players. “We asked ourselves, ‘How are we going to become relevant here, at our own capacity?’” he best way, they igured, was to give the community an opportunity to expand its options beyond farming while increasing its stewardship of its own surroundings, making its people actual stakeholders in the entire supply chain, and not just workers on one end of production.

Another Hacienda Crafts (haciendacrafts.com) line, accent pieces blinged up with glass shards reclaimed from the beaches of Barangay Punta Mesa, in Manapla, Negros Occidental, follows this same philosophy.

Gaston admits to having diiculty getting buy in from the residents at irst. “But after the road shows, they were convinced that we had put a value on the material, so now they keep it.”

She is optimistic about the venture’s future. “We believe that once other people see the value in it, more will join.”

Ina Gaston seen here with a basket made from tiger grass or udjong.

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PARTNER PROMOTION

BRABANTIA Tasty Colours collection

JOSEPH JOSEPH Index collection winner of Excellence and The Gift award

UMBRA Prisma collection designed by Ketl Sung Wook Park set, Living with eletti

LSA Stack collection recipient of two prestigious awards – The Good Award and Design Plus Award

Curated Pieces Transform your spaces and create lasting memories with special objects CURATED OBJECTS HELP deine the feel and look of your home and create beautiful, cohesive stories. houghtfully designed articles, whether they’re accessories from Brabantia and Joseph Joseph or decorative objectss from LSA and Umbra, are striking pieces too that ehance the mood and bring forth lively conversations. Take time to mull over each and every object that you bring into your home and nurture the experiences that bind friendships and family through memorable gatherings.

BRABANTIA TASTY COLOURS AVAILABLE AT TRUEHOME, TRUEVALUE AND RUSTAN’S DEP T STORE UMBRA PRISMA COLLECTION AVAILABLE AT STUDIO DIMENSIONE AND OUR HOME JOSEPH JOSEPH INDEX COLLECTION AVAILABLE AT STUDIO DIMENSIONE, TRUEHOME, RUSTAN’S AND SM HOME LSA STACK COLLECTION AVAILABLE AT STUDIO DIMENSIONE, OURHOME AND W17 HOME

O C T O B E R 2016 37

O C T O B E R 2 0 16 / I S S U E 103

THE ROGUE ARENA Promotions and relevant items, direct from our partners

SONIC BOOM For its 90th year, Danish sound authority Bang & Olufsen unveils the loudspeaker to end all loudspeakers

his bad boy’s name is BeoLab 90, and it sets the bar high. Really high.

Forged from a 65-kilogram aluminium base and worked up the top with the same cutting-edge research aimed towards futuristic design, intelligent functionality, and unlimited acoustic power, this loudspeaker stands rock solid proud at four feet tall. Released in the market as Bang & Olufsen’s (bang-olufsen.com) lagship model for this season, BeoLab 90 is quickly becoming a home theater staple among discriminating audio enthusiasts.

With the help of an all-new Active Room Compensation technology developed in the sound laboratories of Struer, Denmark, the BeoLab 90 automatically adapts to its relative location wherever you decide to put it. he trick is how the loudspeaker measures distance between itself and the

The brand's BeoLab 90 is a celebration of its heritage.

listener while making up for the room’s layout and physical obstructions: you can be in the opposite end of a crowded hall and still hear the bassist of a live performance with exceptional clarity.

BeoLab 90 also ofers control and customization at your ingertips with its Beam Width Control and Beam Direction Control options: the former allows you to alter the breadth and reach of the sound waves, while the latter enables you to steer its audio trajectory.

All these mind-boggling advancements are encased within a 360-degree facade of matte black fabric with no front or back—you decide which is which. Supporting the entire structure is a curved wooden base with a muted, classy inish that is sure to match the tasteful interiors of your well-appointed home. —CARLO NEMO

Hello beautiful. NEW luxurious Hampton sofa available for order in any BoConcept branch.

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O c tob e r 2 0 16

E DI T E D BY

JACS T. SAMPAYAN

TTHE EYE FA S H I O N + S T Y L E + G R O O M I N G

Kix Suarez of off-beat clothing label The Artisan takes to the streets for messy, gritty, real-world inspiration INTERVIEW BY JEROME GOMEZ PHOTOGRAPHS BY SONNY THAKUR

ISSUE NO.

103

THE EYE STYLE

THE FIRST TIME Kix Suarez took a trip to the bowels of old Manila, he experienced a sort of sensory overload. “I was scared shitless.

It’s overwhelming. From beggars with no feet or hands right beside a fried isaw stand to rugby boys trying to hustle you for a buck,” he says. “I remember needing to have a chaperone back then. I know I could’ve just sent someone to buy our materials and supplies for me but it felt wrong. It felt like cheating.” The designer and co-founder of clothing label The Artisan culled from that experience to produce last year’s Collection VIII (his first entirely on his own), with pieces such as Black Nazarene shirts and scarves.

Since 2010, The Artisan— composed of Suarez and his partners Rob Samson, Kevin Dizon, and Bryan Arcebal—has been creating clothes that suit ever-changing interests and aesthetics. Anything from an allblack collection to varsity shirts that promote feelings instead of school pride have come out of its workshop, presenting itself as a diferent take on streetwear. For its latest pieces, collection IX, it explores duality by combining two halves of completely diferent military jackets and adorning them with emblems that promote the partners’ personal musical inspirations.

Today, Suarez says that going on a trip like his Recto-Quiapo sojourn is something he enjoys; it fuels his creativity to produce more obeat yet striking pieces.

“There’s something always exciting and happening there. It stinks, it’s trashy and dirty, but it’s nice to get out of the train station and be no one. To be only known as the guy that buys a lot of tees and scarves from my suki,” he says.

How did you begin making clothes?

It just happened. I was fresh out of college and I just started making it with the help of our family tailor. Back then, it was out of necessity to make clothes that fit me for work. Soon after, it became this thing I pretty much got obsessed with because I liked creating things.

What was your first memory of clothes “speaking to you,” as more than just something you wear?

I started out with collecting sneakers and buying tees of

42 O C T O B E R 2016

jokingly. I always ask people, “But is it fashion?” and just laugh because it’s such a silly word or thing to ask.

You seem to have a deeper relationship with clothing when it comes to your process.

The things we come out with are all part of a story. A love story that I’ve been trying to tell since the get go. It’s this open love letter. It first came about as an insecurity I had after a relationship wherein I felt I wasn’t enough for someone and I thought by making clothes, maybe one day I could be enough for the person. That I could somehow remind someone of the great love I had and could give. That one day EDSA and the newspapers would be filled with the clothes we create and it would be this John Hughesprofessing-my-love-for-you kind of thing.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

“I have a lot of influences: from my parents to Recto to my favorite bands to even my previous relationships. There was just a lot of satisfaction making things. I think it’s not just about clothes, it’s just about creating things. From beer, perfume, flasks, etc.

Clothes may be the one thing we’re known for but we also do a lot of other things, we try to create a lot more than just that. It’s the story. The love letter,” says Suarez.

bands I liked back in high school and college. There was something about seeing people stare at my sneakers or tees. I used to listen to a lot of emo punk back then and it was very hard to get tees from abroad, until one day I found out all I needed to do was take a train ride from Katipunan to Recto. I never disclosed it to other people in school who wore the same shirts as I did but theirs were from the US. I was getting my shirts for only P150 or P200 while their shirts cost from $40 to $60.

What was your favorite piece of clothing growing up?

My band tees. I’ve been into music since I was a kid and my band tees really were my way of wearing my heart on my sleeve.

Any other clothing with an interesting way of being

created, such as your Black Nazarene shirt?

One of the first collections we did with the new team was on Recto.

It was me taking my new partners to show them what inspires me.

To show them a big part of my life. We do a lot of repurposing of existing things. Things that could exist on their own but we try to deconstruct and put them back together just because we can.

We’ve done things with cut up band tees from my suki, Nazarene polos, and flour sack jackets.

Recently we came out with handpainted and hand-stitched vintage BDUs (or Battle Dress Uniforms, camouflaged apparel for combat) from Pampanga.

What for you is fashion?

This is diicult to answer. I don’t know what fashion is. I use the word a lot, but most of the time

Do you have a piece in your head right now that you are dreaming of making?

There’s a lot. But recently I feel like I’ve been able to do the one thing I’ve been meaning to do since this all started. The exciting thing now is that my partners Rob, Kevin, and Bryan are starting to tell their story with the brand and that for me is exciting because now it’s this collection of stories and ideas and not just this one hyper-specific narrative. There is still one mood and one tone but it comes from four heads now rather than just one, making it more relatable, making it more universal.

You said your mother helps you now, what is that working relationship like?

My mom is a painter. She stopped practicing when my sister and I were born so she could take care of us. Now that both of us kids are working, inviting my mom was my way of getting her back into something she loves to do. It’s been great working with my mom because she gets it. I don’t have to say a lot, she knows exactly what to do even to the point where she helps me realize what I actually really want on a shirt or on a jacket.

The Artisan team as well, Rob, Kevin, and Bryan, has been such a big help and has contributed a lot to the brand. The past two collections wouldn’t be possible without them.

How would you describe your creative process?

D-I-Y or Die.

THEARTISANCLOTHING.COM

THE EYE WATCHES

RISK TAKER Under-the-radar watch brand Roger Dubuis creates an aura of desirability with its bold designs and limited pieces WORDS BY JACS T. SAMPAYAN

BY MOST STANDARDS in watchmaking, Roger Dubuis is a curiosity. his 21-year-old, under-the-radar timepiece brand has an image of exclusivity and desirability with its deliberately limited production numbers, of-center aesthetics, and audacious ideas when it comes to making its own movements. “We combine very unconventional expressions of time with technical excellence,” says Olivier Gudin, commercial director for Roger Dubuis for the region.“We’re a very exclusive brand. A lot of people wouldn’t have heard about us.” He says they produce a total of 5,000 pieces annually (with some collections only producing 88 watches globally), distributed in 25 boutiques and 160 points of sales worldwide. he Swiss brand was founded in 1995 by Roger Dubuis and Carlos Dias who at that point have already created names for themselves in the watch industry. he former was developing complications for Patek Philippe for years before starting his own atelier in 1980, while the latter designed for Franck Muller. Gudin says that the brand’s namesake had “this passion for beautiful, hand-inished movements, and had this idea of creating something very unique. A brand that will produce 100 percent of its pieces in certiied Geneva Seal.” In just two decades, they were able to develop more than 30 calibers. “hat is quite remarkable when you take into consideration the time it takes to do a movement. he growth of the brand has been quite rapid,” Gudin says.

Roger Dubuis also has Alvaro Maggini as its creative director, a designation unique in the world of watches.

“It’s common in fashion, but not in watchmaking,” Gudin

CULT FAVORITE

Roger Dubuis' Geneva headquarters. Inset: The Excalibur is the brand's most recognizable model.

44 O C T O B E R 2016

explains. “He oversees everything we do: from the design, to the marketing, to the look of the shops.” Under Maggini’s creative lens, the brand’s aesthetic and appeal gradually solidiied and took more chances when it came to the style of the collections. “he idea is to have something that is very expressive and diferent from the rest,” Gudin says. “Most of our watches are recognizable because we have skeletonized most of our movements.” According to the regional executive, the Roger Dubuis (Glorietta 4, Ayala Center, Makati; 7282828; lucerneluxe.com) aesthetic reduces a piece to its purest expression of movement. “Everything you see here is inished by hand. To qualify for the Geneva Seal of Movement takes hundreds, if not thousands of hours.” he aim of the brand is to “break some codes” as Gudin says. “We are reinterpreting some classics. he tourbillon, for example, is a very classic movement. When we manufacture it, it looks very diferent. he fact that we have skeletonized the whole movement involves a lot of technical challenges.” hese stylistic risks have created cult hits for the brand; movements like Quatuor and the Double Tourbillon have become favorites. A more recent success is its Velvet collection, which features pieces adorned in anything from carbon and enamel to rare Paraiba tourmalines. his kind of thinking gives value to the brand. “here are diferent cultures in the world, but our customers in the end are very self-aware. hey are sure of themselves. hey’re fashionable. hey try to be diferent. hey like to be a bit provocative,” Gudin says. “And we are very provocative.”

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THE EYE EYEWEAR

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Ray-Ban's longtime campaign Never Hide was big on visual experimentation, making use of of abstract art as well as bold-color filters.

Ray-Ban encouraged the fearless expression of one's individuality in its campaign the following year.

This year, the brand takes empowerment up a notch, making diferent statements on the many forms of bravery.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE Eyewear brand Ray-Ban combines sleek, new designs and a social conscience in its latest campaign WORDS BY EMIL HOFILEÑA

Clubround

IT'S PROBABLY NO coincidence that leading eyewear brand Ray-Ban always has a strong vision when it comes to its campaigns. Its current #ItTakesCourage movement displays a sensitivity to youth from all walks of life, and they are appropriately represented by the brand’s wide range of spectacles and sunglasses. he campaign is also markedly progressive in how it explores diferent manifestations of bravery, from the confrontational to the intimate—efectively distancing the brand from its previous reputation as exclusively for the elite.

Ray-Ban started in the late 1930s as a line of custom safety eyewear for US airmen. It was eventually adopted by the US military in general, thanks to the glasses’ combination of style and function. In time, even pop culture icons would be drawn to the power and status associated with the brand.

Round with Gradient Flash CHANGE IS COMING

Double Bridge Story

46 O C T O B E R 2016

The brand’s current collection improves upon old favorites. One model from the thin and lightweight Metal Heroes line takes inspiration from the brand’s popular Clubmaster. The new Clubround glasses 1 are a seamless meld in both name and structure of the Clubmaster and Ray-Ban’s Round model.

Bringing even more ingredients into the mix, the Gradient Flash 2 maximizes the shine seen in a handful of other sunglasses—from the Round and Round Fleck, to the Aviator, Cockpit, and the original Flash Lens. Some models from the collection, meanwhile, are less reconfigurations and more direct homages; the Double Bridge Story frames 3 are a throwback to Ray-Ban’s Gatsby models.

As recent as 2004, the brand continued to project ideas of glamour and luxury through its Change Your View campaign. But in 2007, Ray-Ban followed its own advice and shifted its focus on the individual with its hugely successful Never Hide slogan, which broke new ground by challenging norms and encouraging non-conformit against current standards of style. his turned designer eyewear from a shield into a weapon with which to make a statement. #ItTakesCourage deepens Never Hide’s call to embrace one’s individuality. But more than just asking people to be themselves, the multimedia #ItTakesCourage campaign champions underappreciated occupations and ordinary ways of life. he tone is one of encouragement and the power that everyday people possess. he Ray-Ban (Avant Building, #46 Jupiter corner Mars streets, Bel-Air Village, Makati; 553-7660; eyesociety.com.ph) 2016 Spring/ Summer Update collection sums up the brand thus: while it keeps looking forward, it isn’t letting its roots out of its sight. he new models sport elements from the label's earlier designs, encouraging its new audience to embrace RayBan’s older traditions and it them to a contemporary lifestyle.

PARTNER PROMOTION

Above The Clouds The popular story of a royal marooned becomes an inspiration anew for IWC’s latest limited edition piece.

WORDS BY JACS T. SAMPAYAN

O BEAUTIFUL NARRATIVE

de Saint-Exupery's illustration of his traveling hero is etched in red gold on the watch's face.

n December 30, 1935, a Caudron C-630 Simoun crashed somewhere in the Wadi Natrun Valley in the Sahara. he two men who piloted the monoplane were attempting to break the speed record for a Paris-to-Saigon light and win a prize of 150,000 francs. hey were lying for almost 20 hours when they had to forcibly land close to the Nile Delta. While the co-pilots were miraculously unscathed from the crash, they had to survive the harsh desert landscape with only meager resources to sustain them.

After sufering through hallucinations due to rapid dehydration, the pair was inally rescued by a Bedouin on their fourth day of being lost in the African continent. he mechanic-navigator of the plane was Andre Prevot. His co-pilot? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the journalist and aviator who had come to write and illustrate one of the most enduring and translated novellas of our time, the Little Prince. he Frenchman drew heavily from his experience in the Sahara for his now famous and oft-quoted story about a traveling boy from the stars. his story and de Saint-Exupery’s life has become a source of inspiration for IWC Schafhausen.

Having had a long-standing tradition of creating Pilot’s watches, the Swiss brand started a relationship with the Frenchman’s estate in 2005, and honored him the year after with the Pilot’s Watch Chrono Automatic. his

partnership has extended to supporting the Foundation Antoine de Saint-Exupery, which works with the Cambodian non-governmental organization Sipar that equips reading materials and literature where it is needed. his has led to the construction of school buildings, readings rooms and libraries as well as the scholarships to 1,200 children.

In 2013, the Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar Edition “Le Petit Prince” and Pilot’s Watch Mark XVII Edition “Let Petit Prince” were launched in time for the story’s 70th anniversary. his year, it continues the yearly tradition with the Big Pilot’s Watch Annual Calendar Edition “Le Petit Prince,” marking the seventh time IWC (Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati; 707-9881; iwc.com) a special edition is produced with the novella in mind.

It is an elegant timepiece that relects the duality of de Saint-Exupery’s personality: technical genius and literary artist. he titular prince can be seen standing on his asteroid home, staring out to the heavens through the big sapphire-glass back. From its red gold case and sun pattern inish on the dial to its advanced mechanism and power reserve, it presents an attractive combination of modern technology and poetic design. It features a twin-barrel 52850 calibre that can deliver the watch’s three display discs and a rotor based on a drawing by de Saint-Exupery, and only 250 pieces will be manufactured globally.

O C T O B E R 2016 47

THE EYE SCENTS

IN THE WORLD of

The nose that launched a hundred scents on creating a hit, Catherine Deneuve, and his lifelong inspiration, the City of Lights INTERVIEW BY JACS T. SAMPAYAN

48 O C T O B E R 2016

scents, Francis Kurkdjian is a rock star.

At 25, fresh of f his studies at Institut supérieur international du parfum, de la cosmétique et de l’aromatique alimentaire in Versailles, he created Jean-Paul Gaultier’s iconic fragrance, Le Male, which quickly became a worldwide hit. Five years after, he opened his irst bespoke atelier. Twelve months after that, he won a lifetime achievement award. At 40, he created his own brand, Maison Francis Kurkdjian Paris. During the perfumer’s early years, he formed his own style, a distinctive and contemporary vision of the craft that he wanted to share with the public. “I do believe it is my mission in the world of fragrances to open new paths and question my era about the importance, meaning and place of fragrances,” he says. “his is why I’ve started my own business: to do things I couldn’t do anywhere else like launching scented leather, infuse laundry detergent, children’s bubbles and home scents.”

He has over a hundred fragrances to his name in collaboration with some of the most prestigious names in fashion, and was the irst to create what he calls “olfactive installations” in key cities such as Shanghai, New York, Firenze, and Paris. he French capital also serves as inspiration for his Maison’s latest superstar scents, Petit Matin and Grand Soir. “he city’s magic and spirit of freedom led me to these eau de parfums,” the 47-year-old says. “hey translate the emotions generated by the atmosphere of my two favorite moments of the day, the early morning and the grand evening.”

THE EYE SCENTS

Since launching six years ago, MFK has expanded and continued to be on the forefront of the industry. To what do you attribute this success?

Creation, quality and innovation are the three key elements for building a luxury house in the 21st century. Back that up with our unique positioning. My fragrance house carries my name and that makes the diference. I am the irst perfumer in this century to open my own perfume house. It allows me a free space of creation, that wouldn’t be possible if I was working in the dark at the service of a marketing message with a story built ad hoc.

Your childhood was irst rooted in dance and music. How did you transition from that ield to your interests in fragrances?

I had my true revelation, at the age of 14, by reading an article about perfumery and ive perfumers—Jacques Polge, Jean Kerleo, Françoise Caron, Jean-Louis Sieuzac and Annick Goutal—in the glossy pages of a French magazine. I discovered that the couturier or fashion designer was not the one who was creating the perfumes. here were people behind the scenes, and those people had a very special craft and gift. hen, I saw the movie Le Sauvage with Yves Montant, and Catherine Deneuve in which the main character plays the role of a perfumer in a remote Venezuelan island. After that, I totally fell in love with the craft and told my parents I wanted to become a perfumer. I knew deep inside that it was my vocation.

You once said that being a perfumer is “like being a magician.” How so?

Of course! Just like musicians use notes to express themselves, painters use colors, and writers use words. I use odors and scents to write the stories that come to my mind. I am a storyteller and a magician of the invisible.

Your irst major breakthrough was your collaboration with Jean-Paul Gaultier for Le Male. How did that project come about?

It was in 1995, so I was only 25 years old and 19 95 just fresh out of the Le Male, his collab with perfumery school. During Jean-Paul Gaultier that period, I was taking a marketing course after work. I met the CEO of Gaultier’s fragrance business during my scholarship. She asked me if I wanted to work on a project as a training case and apprenticeship.

After our irst meeting during which I had to present my ideas, she told me she would ask Jean Paul Gaultier himself for his opinion.

He liked one of the routes, which became

Le Male after eight months of hard work and commitment.

What’s your creative process?

It has two stages. I can’t start a fragrance without giving it a name. It is like a title for a book or a piece of art. Words create a world on their own and translate your emotion.

Everything could inspire me, an emotion, a feeling or a wonderment. I don’t have any rules and never restrain myself from having any. So irst, I have to think and imagine what story I want to tell, what feeling I want to provide with the scent until the abstract concept turns suddenly into a name.

Only after having a very clear idea on what to do and where to go with my emotions, I can go to my desk, start to write the formula, and tweak it until I have the right balance that matches the feelings in my head.

Catherine Deneuve in Le Sauvage, a movie Kurkdjian says inspired him to be a perfumer.

In 2001, you started your own atelier. Why did you feel that you had to do it?

I started creating bespoke fragrances nearly 17 years ago. I was a pioneer. here wasn’t an exceptional demand at that time. Today, it is a reality and it’s still growing especially for hotels and private housing. People were looking to have something unique and fully customized.

And my task as a perfumer is to realize people’s olfactive dreams and wishes.

It was also a way to follow and share my contemporary vision of the craft. A way to push the boundaries. Bespoke scents are the ultimate luxury, just like Haute-Couture in fashion, they embody a world where there is no limit in terms of creativity,. he only ones are the creator himself and his imagination. Recently I created a bespoke fragrance for a private yacht.

You and MFK co-founder Marc Chaya met at a dinner after a Jean-Paul Gaultier fashion show back in 2003. How did that meeting go?

During our dinner Marc Chaya asked me what I was doing in life and I said “I am a perfumer.”

He didn’t know that much about perfumery, so we had a long moment talking about it. He was really surprised not to know my name despite the number of fragrances I had created.

MAISON FRANCIS KURKDJIAN IS AVAILABLE AT RUSTAN'S MAKATI, COURTYARD DRIVE, AYALA CENTER, MAKATI; 813-37349; RUSTANS.COM.PH

With time we became friends and realized that we were sharing the same vision of lifestyle and deinition of luxury. Plus, we had complementary professional and creative skills.

Little by little, we started to work together and in 2009 we inally co-founded Maison Francis Kurkdjian.

From that point until MFK launched six years ago was a lengthy period. What did you take your time with?

It took us almost one year for the conception of the entire House and identity. he universe of Maison Francis Kurkdjian is globally inspired

by Paris, the city of my heart.

Our scents are meant to become a signature fragrance or part of a fragrance wardrobe that you can wear whenever you want or feel. Wearing a scent from Maison Francis Kurkdjian is a promise of wearing a state of the art scent, crafted in the heritage of French perfumery. A la rose was a surprising success for me and Aqua Universalis remains one of our top. Baccarat Rouge 540, one of our latest creations had become an incredible hit all around the world.

When picking a signature scent, what important points to think about?

I do not believe in a single signature fragrance.

Wearing a single scent is passé, old-fashioned and in contradiction with our contemporary society. Would you wear the same outit in the same color every day? No, so why would you wear the same scent?

Modern people are complex and multiple.

And nowadays, they have much more freedom and power to express all the facets of their personality. So the same way they have a diverse wardrobe for their clothing, I’ve imagined my collection as an olfactive wardrobe to accompany them every day, in all their moments, and to embrace all their moods. From work, to love, to being a parent, each scent has its own unique signature to fulil all your emotional answers.

Still, there are 20 16 some questions you Petit Matin and Grand Soir, have to think about the latest from Maison while picking the Francis Kurkdjian good fragrance: Does it move me? What emotions come up while wearing it? Do I get comments from my entourage? hen you can also think about the technical aspects like its lastingness, its trail or volume. he last thing: take your time. It is necessary to know a perfume as top notes difer from base notes for most of the scents. So you have to wear it, wait, and get deeper and deeper into it.

O C T O B E R 2016 49

FOOD MUSIC HEALTH FILM + TV ART + DESIGN

Come meet everyone.

theneighborhood.ph

O C T O B E R 2 0 16 / I S S U E 103

THE ROGUE ARENA Promotions and relevant items, direct from our partners

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE With more than a century of refinement, Ginza-based paper supply store Itoya is poised to take Manila by storm

Show, don’t tell. he rule is simple as it is timeless, and Itoya has been doing exactly that with its products since the transitional Meiji period in 1904. Fast forward a hundred years and the Japanese stationery store has become the globe’s premier supplier of school, art, and oice essentials, forever upholding its core belief in creativity through quality and innovation.

Expanding southward from its iconic, 12-storey headquarters in Ginza, Japan—now a tourist attraction noted for the giant red paperclip on its façade—Itoya has forged a partnership with our very own National Book Store (nationalbookstore.com) to bring the delicate power of personalization to familiar grounds. he initial shop-in-shop setup caters to irsttimers and design enthusiasts alike. Customers are encouraged to get a feel of assorted paper textures and to igure out what combination of materials they like best. Whatever they choose, each Itoya item is a heartfelt gift treasured as much as a written dedication on a note card.

For students and young professionals geared towards style and individuality, Itoya ofers the Color Chart brand of notebooks, mechanical pencils, pouches, and other accessories which all come in vibrant tones. Meanwhile, the Romeo line presents a more muted and regal aesthetic in fountain pens and leather-bound journals targeted towards the modern businessman.

Globetrotters are sure to get hooked on the Contrail collection of patterned notepads and wooden pens, inspired by aircraft and travel, designed for a life on the go. he Kolo line, which specializes in keeping mementos intact, ofers photo albums and ile folders that prevent the decomposition and discoloration of precious images and keepsakes. Handcrafted with the minimalist in mind, the Helvetica line keeps things sleek and smart with its wide array of ballpoint pens, clipboards, and binders.

Indeed, the sheer simplicity of Itoya’s design makes it a must-have brand for discerning creatives. —CARLO NEMO

O c tob e r 2 0 16

E DI T E D BY

PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ

THE SLANT

ISSUE NO.

103

OPINIONS + IDEAS + PERSPECTIVES

Still Finding Larry

My Own Life in Progress

Vexed in the City

BY ANA ALCALA

BY JULIUS VILLANUEVA

BY PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ

Few artists can claim to have inluenced how a medium is produced; a subject, taught; a community, built. Such is the long, jolly shadow of comics pioneer Larry Alcala.

A creative outlier’s chosen space is often diicult, at times lonely, and always rewarding. It’s not for the ambitious, yet it attracts the most determined. he creator of Life in Progress gives us a candid tour.

Greater Manila. A food stop at every block, an hour for every kilometer. Floods and festivals, spif f malls and decrepit hospitals.

Our reason to leave and argument to stay.

Ana Alcala ON THE RELEVANCE OF LARRY ALCALA

Still Finding Larry Larry Alcala was a cultural phenomenon whose influence went beyond his weekend comic strip. Here, his granddaughter gives us the view from their household

H

ere’s a slice of life: a small studio at the top loor of a beautiful UP Village house. he walls are covered with plaques, shelves of Betamax tapes, and Sinatra cassettes. here is a drawing table in the middle of the room, and behind it is Larry Alcala, my Lolo, drawing ink over faint pencil squiggles. Beside his desk is a mini-fridge. And inside that mini-fridge is the iced cofee that my sisters and I really came there for.

When she was two, my sister Ingga tried to Lisa Macuja her way down the stairs. She sustained injuries, with neither of my parents around. Of this incident, I would like to point out three things. Firstly, why was she dancing ballet down the stairs? I know she was two, but what was she thinking? Secondly, it’s odd that neither of my parents were around because they were home a lot when my sisters and I were growing up. And lastly, who drove Ingga to the UP Inirmary to get those stitches on her forehead (which later bore a lifelong scar that looked nothing like Harry Potter’s)? Apparently, it was my grandfather.

Growing up, we were always asked, “Who took after your lolo?” “Can you draw?” “Why is there a drawing of a girl with a girafe’s body on the wall?” hough gifted with the artistry of someone sketching with her non-dominant hand, I was not the appointed successor to the Alcala pen. hat honor belongs to the staircase ballerina herself, Ingga. Family legend has it that after Ingga was born, Lolo looked at her and said, “his one.” As if to say that she was the one to carry the burden of never being allowed to draw with just stick igures.

I sort of always knew that Lolo was a man of signiicance. I remember people walking up to him, asking for an autograph or a quick caricature, and he would oblige. He was a quiet man, but for some reason, he was always surrounded by friends.

It was when he passed away that I became fully aware of his contributions to our cultural history. Conferred the title “Dean of Filipino Cartoonists,” he created over 500 cartoon characters, 20 comic strips, six movies, two murals, and 15,000 published pages. He was a pioneer of Philippine animation and fought tirelessly to instate commercial art into the academe. He helped establish professional

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organizations for Filipino cartoonists and illustrators and was a irm believer in the Filipino artist’s creative ability. Because of this legacy, tributes came in from people from high places, and more important, from ordinary citizens such as myself who were simply touched by his works.

In a sit-down interview following his death, my sisters and I were asked about our grandfather’s legacy. By “sit-down interview,” I mean that the segment producer gave us the questions in advance so that we could think of something before the cameras rolled. Ingga was deinitely going to say artistic skill, because she,

STILL LIVES

Above: Sidewalk Bistros. Alcala’s Slice of Life was his most popular work, published by Weekend Magazine, the Sunday Tribune, and the Sunday Times. Opposite: The author, who inherited the humor if not the knack for drawing.

along with our youngest sister Ivy, did end up being gifted in that area. But what was I to say?

“Humor,” said Ingga. “Yes,” I replied, relieved. “hat’s a good one. Sense of humor.”

I recall this incident not because it was the closest thing I would ever get to a gripping tell-all with Barbara Walters, but because nearly 15 years after his passing, I ask myself, what did my Lolo teach me? And what is his relevance to a new generation of Filipinos, many of whom no longer know his name?

Categorically, Lolo was part of the Silent Generation, having been born in 1926. But in many ways, he shares so much in common with kids today. He started making comics as a teenager, through the war. He was a classically trained painter and studied under Fernando Amorsolo at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. But because he was also good at math, he moonlighted as an engineering major at the University of Santo Tomas. How very “slashie.” But when he was busted, he had to choose between that and the ine arts scholarship he got from Manila Times publisher Ramón Roces. He chose the latter, and worked on his cartoons every single day for the rest of his life.

Lolo lived the great millennial dream of working from home. But he did so at a pace that would have made other people sufer a nervous breakdown. As a copywriter, I have only an inkling of how physically and psychologically taxing a cartoonist’s life can be—the challenge of churning out brilliance on a daily basis, to produce creativity on demand.

In many ways, Lolo was a man of contradictions. A consummate family man, he was the epitome of a soft-spoken and strait-laced grandfather, an image that belies the wit and playfulness that we all see in his comics. But for all his conservativeness, Lolo was a progressive. hrough sheer cartooning, he was able to raise a family, including a son with an intellectual disability, and build a home—something that only a handful of Filipino cartoonists have been able to do.

Ivy, Lolo’s youngest grandchild, started earning from her illustrations while still in high school. Like her, many kids now see commercial art as a viable career path, a notion that was not always in place. My father once confessed that growing up, he felt a mild sense of

Lolo lived the great millennial dream of working from home. But he did so at a pace that would have made other people suffer a nervous breakdown. insecurity when comparing Lolo’s profession to that of his classmates’ fathers, who were presumably businessmen, bankers, lawyers, doctors. I told him that if you had a cartoonist for a dad these days, you’d be so cool.

Today, at the UP College of Fine Arts, a large chunk of freshmen are visual communication majors. Ingga was one of them a few years back.

But that wasn’t always the case, because there was a time when classicists found no place for cartoons, comics, and commercial design in the “ine arts.” We may take it for granted today, but after introducing the irst local college course on commercial design and the country’s irst 8mm ilm animation course, Lolo had to ight hard to legitimize the ield and establish the College’s Department of Visual Communication.

Juvenal Sanso, in writing about Lolo after his death, criticized the “stigma about cartooning” that once existed, calling wit and humor “as highly a respectable endeavor as any other form of imaginary creation, period.” So if humor— with its power to inluence thinking and bring to light both the noble and the unsavory—is his greatest legacy, then I am honored to carry that torch.

Lolo would have turned 90 this year. To this day, some people’s faces light up at the mention

of his name. To them, Larry Alcala is a reminder of childhood weekends—the eager anticipation for the Sunday newspaper, the competition between siblings on who would ind Lolo’s likeness irst in that issue’s Slice of Life. For some, his legacy runs deeper. I know of a few peers in the television and advertising industries who credit his works for inspiring their own successful careers in art.

But how do you introduce him to a generation that no longer reads the newspaper?

How do you acquaint him with young people who are willing to go out of their homes and tell their mothers to stop the car because there’s a Jigglypuf on the street? (Guilty.) Well, you make them do just that: challenge them to ind Mang Larry in their own slice of life, through a nationwide game that we’re rolling out this year.

We think the way to pay tribute to him is not by modernizing or reinterpreting his works.

You don’t have to, because they still resonate.

Rather, it’s by reminding ourselves of what he stood for: the humor of everyday Filipino life, that self-deprecating jab at our lawed but fascinating psyche. hat’s his legacy, to me and to everybody: that as long as you can still laugh about it, life is a beautiful piece of art.

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Julius Villanueva ON THE LIFE OF AN INDIE COMICS CREATOR

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Paolo Enrico Melendez ON OUR LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CITY

Vexed in the City It takes more than a little moxie to stay in a mega city as schizophrenic as ours. Here’s a tribute to that relationship

M

etro Manila, capital and potentate: the unlivable unbelievable. For those on the outside, you are gaping mouth and stomping foot. But to us who live among you, yours are the sinew and the white matter. We can’t stand you but we can’t leave you. You make a great meme. You are the worst metaphor. here are almost 13 million of us among you now—the ninth most populated megacity in Asia, in a space they say will be made uninhabitable by traic within the next decade. Listen: up north the container vans idle in that telltale diesel engine rumble, wheels thicker than a drunk’s slur slowly plowing into the thin asphalt; the ruts form like a bad habit. Hear the Babel din of ive diferent videoke sessions in the same mid-rise, mid-80s condominium, walls the color of old paper under the umber afternoon smog. And we love it!

Because under the inluence of your company, a

thing of quiet is a thing of boredom. “Wala nang pinipiling oras ang traic,” the truck driver says to the pahinante, his observation punctuated by the quick scratch of roller on lint as he lights

street lights and the spires of indigenous churches disappearing into the horizon. here are more bare walls in this part of town, just hollow blocks and the cement mortar in between, corrugated sheets used not just for rooing but as makeshift enclosures. he valley opens up past the tall, wild grass, beyond the odd motorcycle shops strung up with lit strips of LEDs in greens and reds, the big wet markets decked with the signboards of 7-in-one cofee and spirulina mushrooms. “Ang payat mo na,” a man inside the market says. “Ang taba ko nga e,” the woman replies.

“Lakas mo kasi lumamon,” the man ends, honest now at the hiatus in lirtation.

Seventeen separate political units call you home, perhaps begrudgingly. We have seen your snit wrinkles and your parched moles, Manila.

Will you let us see under the cloth which you drape over lives lost or on the verge thereof?

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up a cigarette. Across the street, in a cemetery for the old rich and long dead, a cursillo house stands silent.

Urban center four decades old, you were based of of revolutionary times, and cobbled together during reactionary years: an area for a strongman’s grasping wife to govern. To the East, wide highways aspire to the distant Sierra Madre,

PHOTOS BY VEEJAY VILLAFRANCA

Around here, we say“Para kang nasa ibang bansa,” which is a gleeful compliment rather than expression of cultural panic.

HOLY THE SOLITUDES OF SKYSCRAPERS AND PAVEMENTS

A view of the Pasig River, which runs through most of central Metro Manila as it connects the bays of Laguna and Manila. Opposite: A pedestrian overpass in Cubao, Quezon City. The city was once the nation’s capital for 28 years.

Look to the South now, where the trucks full of recyclables drive on, soda bottles and ice cream tubs visible through the wire mesh. he heap is topped with campaign posters just now gathered, the colors washed out and muddy, one smiling face indistinguishable from the next like a promise lapsed and forgiven. We roll down the car windows so we can catch a whif–we are tourists in our land. On the sidewalk, a bag lady laden with backpack coming apart at the seams stoops down to inspect something, above her a sign in relief on the concrete wall professes love for that city. Step inside the hospital nearby and wonder at the absence of that sterile hospital smell. here is only indiference, and the undertone of jeep exhaust seeping from the

highway out front.

We have walked all six hundred of your square kilometers, Metro Manila. We have marveled at the smooth caps of your elbows, admired the elegant angle that is the crook of your chin. Will you let us look up the garment you wear to hide from us the comforts so few enjoy? Feel the old capital pruning up under loodwater again—feet clammy under soaked shoes, hair inexplicably wet despite deployment of umbrella. On the gutters are cement pipes too late in the installation, discarded energy drink bottles loating where the tired workers had earlier discarded them.

As we wade through the lood, electric current shoots through us from a nearby streetlamp. It is nothing dramatic. No slapstick frizzing of hair, no cartoon revelation of skeleton. Just a bare tingling that climbs from toes and shin to thigh and hips; isn’t this how paralysis starts?

You power over a third of the entire country’s economy. Life hums 24/7 in your business districts, where the streets are gobbled up by

buildings with too many nouns to their names.

We wear our lanyards like medals, our oice-issue jackets like the juvenile tokens of dating. Woe is the man of leisure who walks into a restaurant during employee meal hour. here are remnants of the old life, here and there. A waiting shed, for instance, once used by residents long evicted to make way for commerce. hat shed is disused now, all cat piss and rust—a mere carbuncle of memory in your inancial districts considered global class. In front of it looms a new high-end mall, smelling of fresh cement and scrubbed air. A temperature-controlled limbo, where the in-house bossa nova is purgatorial in itself, blasts of ire and water in triumphal display at the drive way entrace. Around here we say “Para kang nasa ibang bansa,” which is a gleeful compliment rather than expression of cultural panic.

Metro Manila, center of our dreams and disappointments: discouraging drive and scowling muse. We know you won’t write back. his won’t be our last letter.

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s h e ’s c o m e

Whether she’s playing the elusive muse in Ang Nawawala or an adventurous school girl in the sexually charged Ninja Party, Annicka Dolonius leaves men enraptured. As the suring drama Apocalypse Child screens nationwide this month, its director, MARIO CORNEJO, recalls the lirtatious child-woman who irst caught his eye in Raya Martin’s gathering of cinema visionaries in Zambales in 2011, the same girl who would take his breath away—and make Sid Lucero fall head over heels—on the set in the beaches of Baler

Photographs by Johann Bona

H&M bodysuit, AlaĂŻa shoes

She’s a little smaller than you think. No matter how often I see her, she’s always smaller than I think she is.

I irst met Annicka Dolonius in 2011 at a fete that was aptly called he Great Cinema Party. It was a gathering of ilmmakers, critics, educators, and artists that was being ilmed at Casa San Miguel by Raya Martin, the cinematic wunderkind. He eventually turned that party into a movie, because of course he did.

“Who’s that girl?” I asked. he girl in question was laughing and dancing, lirting and just being young and beautiful. “hat’s Annicka. She’s the future of Philippine cinema,” said Raya. He’d used that line before to me referring to six or seven diferent people. But still, I took notice.

Later that night, the party moved to the beach. Around a hundred ilmmakers and artists lay on the sand under the moon. Annicka took of her clothes and walked into the water in her underwear. Nobody was looking at the sky.

It turns out I had seen Annicka act before in a ilm I liked very much. Auraeus Solito’s Pisay was about young kids in the Philippine Science High School and Annicka played a studious young love interest, Wena. Annicka was great in it, but nothing about that performance reminded me of this free spirit swimming in the dark night waters, her white skin lashing in the moonlight as she laughed and dove below, breaking the surface only when we drunk and high onlookers were sure she was drowning.

Years later, my partner Monster Jimenez and I were writing a movie called Apocalypse Child. We needed a character who was young, who was youth. “Like who?” Monster asked me.

“Kind of like Annicka,” I said. “Annicka like when we met her.”

Monster understood immediately.

So we wrote the character of Fiona, a 19-year-old balikbayan. Fiona arrives into the surf town of Baler and immediately catches the eye of Ford, a surf instructor just past his own youth, in his early thirties. Ford has been the star surfer of Baler his entire life, but as he crosses the line of just past his prime, he inds himself stuck in the role of the young suring prodigy and the supposed love child of American director Francis Ford Coppola. “his particular girl really should resonate with him,” I told Monster. “He wants to move his life forward, and this girl should make him feel like he might actually do it this time.”

I needed a character who could make life seem possible. “If only we could cast Annicka from ive years ago,” Monster said.

When we inally inished the script and started casting, we saw all manner of young girls. Some of them were really good actors who did a good job on auditions. But they weren’t quite Annicka. We needed a 19-year-old. he age was a major part of the story, and while we had heard that Annicka had played a high school student just the year before, she didn’t seem like a viable option at 27.

“Let’s bring her in,” I said. “Just let her read. She probably won’t work anymore, but what can it hurt?”

So she came in to audition, smaller than I remembered.

“You look great,” I said. She smiled. ‘hanks!’ she said.

I told her about her character, Fiona. In my mind, Fiona was this young, beautiful girl who had never really been hurt, because that was what I thought happened to young, beautiful girls. Monster and I handed her the script and had her read with Vives, our assistant director. Most times when you have a reading, you’re only hoping for a sense that the actor will be able to handle the role, or may have something unique to contribute. If you’re really lucky, you see a spark of life in the words as they’re spoken.

It was clear to everyone in the room that we had our Fiona.

Marks on paper turned into a moment, a real moment, when she read the words.

Annicka isn’t diferent when she acts. She doesn’t become someone else. She just becomes herself, but more so. here’s somehow more of her, and no matter how wide the shot, her essence ills the screen. And when the scene is over, you turn the camera of and there she is, smaller than you think.

We brought her in to read with other actors, and one day it was time for her to read with our lead actor, Sid Lucero, who we had cast as Ford. It was a chemistry test of sorts. Ford and Fiona had to be completely comfortable with each other, so the actors had to really get along. For example, in one scene Fiona does a headstand while naked, just to make a point. And from experience, you really have to be comfortable with someone before you do a naked handstand with them.

Sid and Annicka’s initial reading did not have the naked handstand scene. It was a simple dialogue scene and in it Fiona only had three lines. But the scene played beautifully.

When Annicka left the room later, Sid just pointed to the door, an astonished look on his face. “Did you see her?” he asked, dumbfounded.

With three lines, Annicka had won him over completely.

As our workshops and rehearsals wore on, Monster and I got to know Annicka better. And we saw how much she was adding to the character. And we realized that as much as we liked Fiona, we loved where Annicka was taking the character more. here was so much similar between Fiona and Annicka, the freedom of her movement, the sheer joy of life in her. But Annicka was funnier, and her laugh was light and infectious.

And unlike Fiona, Annicka had a real past, has experienced real pain.

Apocalypse Child is about people stuck in their stories, and how their past controls them to this day. In my mind, the other characters, damaged people, were going to hurt a young innocent girl, like chemical waste burns a lower, destroying what’s pure around it.

It was too easy a characterization, and Annicka was bringing a more nuanced role.

O C T O B E R 2016 63

“Like what?” she said. I asked about the scars on her arms and legs.

“Well,” she said, “what do you want to know?” We talked about what made her think of doing this to herself in her youth.

“What if it’s not about damaged people ruining a young girl?” I said to Monster one day.

“What if we have four characters stuck in their pasts, unable to move on from their stories, and this one young girl who has moved on, the only one who was willing to change?”

We called Annicka and asked to meet her that night. She was having dinner with her sister, but said we could have cofee outside the restaurant.

“What’s up?” she asked. She smiled.

“I need your permission,” I said. “I want to change your character to be more like you, but I was thinking of using some of your past.”

“Like what?” she said. I asked about the scars on her arms and legs. “Well,” she said, “what do you want to know?”

We talked about what made her think of doing this to herself in her youth. I wanted to know what she thought of herself now, years later.

I was scared, and she was so, so open. She seemed nervous, but reassuring. I wondered whether I was doing the right thing.

“I haven’t known you too long,” she said. “But I trust you. Go ahead.”

Beautiful girls get exploited. All the time. I felt the burden of that trust.

I remembered that this was the same girl I irst saw so willing to jump into the dark waters while everyone else watched.

In the irst dialogue scene in the ilm, Ford runs his ingers over Fiona’s scars.

“You can ask,” Fiona says.

“Ikaw ba ‘to?” Ford asks.

“Did I do that? No, some other girl did that to herself,” Fiona answers. hat scene, born out of those intimate conversations between Annicka and myself, established Fiona’s character completely. No more backstory was necessary, and Ford’s responsibility to be careful with this young girl was clear to the characters and the audience. hat collaboration with Annicka made me braver, more willing to try things. She has that efect. hat irst adjustment set the tone for the rest of the shoot, and we started to do the same thing with our other actors.

Annicka has had an interesting life, to put it mildly. And like Fiona, she’s been hurt by people who should have been more careful with her. But she’ll still look you in the eye and tell you she trusts you.

Apocalypse Child was shot completely in Baler, Aurora. It’s a beautiful, magical surf town where Francis Ford Coppola shot the suring scenes of the classic ilm Apocalypse Now. Local legend has it that when that ilm wrapped, they left a surfboard prop behind loating in the ocean. Five local boys used that board and taught themselves to surf, becoming the irst Philippine suring champions. When shooting on our ilm began, the entire cast and crew fell under the spell of Baler, maybe Annicka most of all. She committed completely to her character, which manifested most obviously in two ways.

First of, she decided that Fiona wouldn’t bathe very often, so she decided not to bathe unless absolutely necessary. In the hot Baler sun, Annicka soon had a ive-foot olfactory force ield. As gorgeous as she was, nobody in the crew wanted to get that close to her.

But there was one person who wasn’t thrown of by her scent. I think he reveled in it. And this brings us to the second way that Annicka was committing to Fiona’s character.

As we watched Ford and Fiona fall in love in Baler, it soon became apparent to the entire production that something was happening between Annicka and Sid as well. heir eyes lit up when they saw each other, and they soon were inseparable.

I didn’t confront them directly about what was happening, but I didn’t have to. Sometimes they made some noises about their closeness being part of their acting process but it felt like bullshit to everyone. We knew what love looked like.

By the end of the production, I had witnessed some amazing performances from all of our actors, and not least from Annicka. She was raw and real, a pure actor. One of my favorite scenes in the ilm consists of a single shot of Fiona in the dark. She says two lines and breaks my heart, even though her back is to us and we’re 30 feet away.

Soon enough, it was time to say goodbye. he wrap party in Baler was fueled by too much alcohol, and that was my irst experience with fun-drunk Annicka. Much later, I’d meet not-fun-drunk-anymore Annicka. But for this particular night, things were great.

“You don’t know how much this experience has changed me,” she said. I hoped things would work out for her.

Months later, Apocalypse Child was inally inished and showed at the QCinema International Film Festival, where it won Best Film and a few other awards including Best Supporting Actress for Annicka.

Since then the ilm has had its share of critical success, competing in ilm festivals in places like Italy, New York, and Korea with upcoming festivals in Poland, Germany, Hawaii, Toronto, and Laos. We’ve also had some local success with seven Gawad Urian nominations and nine Film Academy nominations, the bulk of those being for acting. Our ive main actors, Sid, Annicka, Gwen Zamora, RK Bagatsing, and Ana Abad Santos, made our ilm what it is and deserve every nomination and award they have coming to them.hey proved to me that old adage that 90 percent of directing actors is casting.

I’ve become closer to all of the actors since the shoot, and I’m thrilled at all the success they’ve had. But as far as their personal lives are concerned, there’s one success story that brings me more relief than joy.

One year later, Sid and Annicka are still together, and if you want to liven up a party, you can’t do better than inviting them to your festival event or birthday. hey still look at each other like they did when they were playing Ford and Fiona, and it’s still obvious to everyone how in love they are.

I called her and asked to meet recently.

“What’s up?” she asked. “hey want me to write about you,” I said. “About how I met you, what it was like to work with you. But I’ve gotten to know you, maybe too well, and I wanted to know how much I can say.”

She looked at me, nervous but smiling. She took a deep breath. She dove in like she always does, braver than she ought to be.

“Write what you like,” she said. “I trust you.”

Styling by Pam Quiñones Makeup by Archibald Tolentino for nars Hair by Francis Guintu for Cynos Inside Hair Care Stylist assisted by Maita Baello, Alexine Castillo, Mel Sy, Shark Tanae Photographer assisted by Adelaine Dela Rosa, Norman Mendoza, Lancer Salva Digital Imaging by Kate Field Special thanks to Kristine Kintana, Chel of Dashing Diva, and the Luneta Hotel

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Jean Paul Gaultier swimsuit, Yaya Paris vintage cover up, Alexander McQueen boots

MONUMENTS MEN

A transport hub, the adaptive re-use of heritage structures, a container dormitory, the illumination of architectural totems, and a new design for a tower dreamed to watch over precious Tubbataha. Behind these ambitious projects are visionaries reshaping the national landscape, their humanistic approach characterized by a strong inclusive bent and a zeal to efect major impact. In times of turmoil, these advocates seem to say, there is only one way to think: big.

Photos by y

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CONSERVING CULTURE

PHOTO BY MILO SOGUECO

The Manila Metropolitan Theater is readied for a major comeback When the National Commission for Culture and the Arts kicked of rehabilitation eforts for the Manila Metropolitan Theater with a clean-up drive, some people were skeptical.

“Ano ang magagawa niyan?” architect and team leader Gerard Lico says, echoing the most popular reaction to the revival of the iconic 1930s building now in a state of decay.

One year later, the project’s first phase has been sold to a contractor for a whopping P290 million, proving that Lico’s vision–“When we do heritage rehabilitation, we have to engage the public”–was spot on.

“I thought I was the only one who was eager,” Lico says of the project’s early days. But then supporters came—students, professionals, even local firefighters because there was no water in the area: all of them volunteers. “Mahal pala ng tao iyong building. They expressed their identity with it.” Ten thousand volunteers flooded the oice e-mail server; overloaded, it shut down.

Concurrent with the clean up was a structural survey of the building. New tech allowed for definitive diagnostics. Ground penetrating radar, for example, confirmed what was once thought of as urban myth: a nearby ice plant provided cold air to the theater via underground pipes. “We found a collapsed tunnel, which

needs to be filled up to arrest flooding,” Lico says.

Likewise spotted were weak points and other areas begging for reinforcement. Just as well: the theater must get up to speed to meet modern building codes.

Adaptive reuse is at the heart of all the planned retrofitting. There’s talk of a roof garden, as well as sustainable conservation practices to minimize consumption of energy and resources. “We’re looking to cut down water consumption by 70 percent, for example, with these interventions,” Lico says.

But the ultimate goal is for the Met project–a symbolic reconnection to culture in general–to spark an urban renaissance. The team assessed 175 unique ornaments within the Art Deco style theater, all mapped out in detail for future publication as an adult coloring book. Galleries, exhibition halls, workshop rooms, and a cinematheque are in the works.

And finally, Lico intends to extend the program to make the Met not just the object, but the subject matter of restoration.

“We’re going to make this a case study in material analysis.”

And where best to house this case study than in the grand old dame itself? “We hope to start a field school for architecture professionals looking to study conservation in depth,” Lico concludes. —PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ

Architect Gerard Lico leads the eforts to rehabilitate the Manila Metropolitan Theater.

FREEING THE ROADS Fernando Zobel de Ayala is leading us into the future

Zobel de Ayala photographed in the lift of ALI’s headquarters.

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according to him, “the focal point” of the One Ayala venture. It is smartly located at the entrance to the Makati CBD and strategically connected to the nearby MRT station. The hub will be created for the gargantuan task of cutting down congestion in Makati and Ayala EDSA, the twin titans of Philippine traic, so of course the infrastructural response has to be equally immense, of course the Department of Transportation and the MMDA are backing the project. Colossal institutions must come together to counter colossal problems. Because even if we pretend for a minute that this country is on a fast track to prosperity, “What is the point of growing 6 percent a year if we cannot improve the quality of life of our people?” Zobel de Ayala says. “These are problems that can be solved. But we need bold and large scale solutions.” Maybe these promises, once they come to fruition, will be enough to assuage both the experts and the laymen, the ones yearning to board the trains of more developed worlds.—JAM PASCUAL

PHOTO BY CYRUS PANGANIBAN

The key to national prosperity is an eicient transport system. It’s a widely accepted axiom, for both the urban planning expert and the city’s tired, train-boarding layman.

“Just look at Bangkok or Singapore,” you might hear from either camp. You can tell how developed a country is by how easily everyone gets around.

Whether those words come from a place of theory or exhaustion, such manner of conjecture is entirely fair.

This isn’t to say both government bodies and private entities haven’t pitched in to loosen up the roads. (They all have, falling flat in the process). This is to say that Ayala Land Inc. President and CEO Fernando Zobel de Ayala’s vision for his intermodal transport hub might be the closest thing we’ll have to cut congestion down. One Ayala, the new space that may finally convince both government and big business that urban fixtures and expanses of green can actually coexist, was conceptualized last year. It is set to be what holds Zobel de Ayala’s intermodal transport hub which is,

Boonsirithum in a communal space at Cityhub Worker’s Dormitory’s Mandaluyong compound.

CONTAINED COMMUNITY

PHOTO BY MILO SOGUECO

An entrepreneur provides digniied housing for transient workers To the jaded urbanite, the colorful containers stacked in a spacious Mandaluyong compound look like temporary housing or oices often seen in construction sites. For over 200 migrant male laborers, Cityhub Worker’s Dormitory is home.

A reasonable P1,700 a month pays for a bunk bed, a locker, internet access , cable TV, and the use of the clean bathrooms and common utility areas. An air-conditioned upgrade costs a mere P2,200. Light cooking is allowed using charcoal and wood. It is perhaps the most decent accommodation that a worker on a tight budget could aford.

Thai-born entrepreneur Panya Boonsirithum started the project in 2011 for the family-owned Arcya Commercial Corporation’s workers’ housing needs. There was a long waiting list, and soon, Boonsirithum realized that it could be a sustainable business and an alternative

solution to the transient worker housing problem.

Today, Cityhub is comprised of two-storey container van walk-ups with a capacity of 260 beds that attracts worker-residents from varying fields. “Snoring is a problem,” Boonsirithum responded when asked about the headaches of running a men’s dorm. He also recounted how one worker would wake up early so he could switch the TV channel to his favorite show and take the remote control with him whenever he needed to go for bathroom breaks. Other than that, everything seems to be in order in Cityhub’s community.

Boonsirithum is looking to expand by partnering with owners of idle land all over the country. That is great news for millions of workers who dream of a clean, safe, and pleasant lodging. Though tiny, each bunk bed is a personal space where a humble laborer’s sense of dignity is restored. —PATRICK GOZON

Architect Dylan Melgazo will soon oversee the construction of the Tubbataha ranger station.

NATURE’S GUARDIAN

An architect builds a new outpost for Tubbataha’s guardsmen from the highly corrosive marine environment.

The new station will rest on three main pile-driven piers for better anchorage against strong typhoons. The piers will carry three structures—a research facility, a transport dock complete with helipad, and the rangers’ command center outfitted with staf quarters.

Melgazo’s proposed station will appear as a cluster of compact forms on thick stilts rising from the waters of the reef. Powered by solar panels and wind turbine, it will also feature systems for collecting rain water.

Construction is yet to start, but with the green light from the diferent government agencies involved, this will please conservationists, including recent visitor, HRH Prince Albert II of Monaco, who spent four days exploring and filming Tubbataha’s dive sites. With its purposeful strokes sympathetic and responsive to its surrounds, Melgazo’s design is not just a station, but a beacon of hope for the future of our natural treasures. —PATRICK GOZON

PHOTO BY CYRUS PANGANIBAN

Architect Dylan Melgazo, a consultant for WWF-Philippines, was tapped by the Protected Areas Management Board to design a more permanent and modern ranger station at the famed Tubbataha Reefs. With the natural reserve threatened by global warming, a research facility was added to the plan. He spent a month living with the eight hardy rangers who patrol the reefs on rotation all year round. Melgazo experienced the problems faced by the reefs’ sentinels and discovered a humbling reality: in the tough environs of the Sulu Sea, there was no room for an architect’s ego.

Tubbataha’s remote location, fragile site, and the extreme weather conditions demanded rigorous attention to detail and practically dictated the outpost’s design.

Melgazo conceptualized a three-cluster complex that will rise on the atoll’s rock formation, a more stable option than the sandbar where the existing makeshift station is erected. This will also involve minimal coral damage.

Steel components will be specially treated as protection

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CHINATOWN RENAISSANCE

Business vets and young creatives join forces to revive Escolta

PHOTO BY MILO SOGUECO

Escolta is stirring from a deep coma. The once bustling street in Chinatown is gently being nudged awake by an unlikely coalition: First United Building’s (FUB) majority shareholders, Robert and Lorraine Sylianteng, and the people behind artist-run space 98B COLLABoratory.

The group’s vision is “to make the whole street a nexus for all things creative,” said 98B’s co-founder and executive director Marika Constantino. FUB’s owners have taken the lead by opening the Art Deco building’s doors to experimental undertakings kick-started by 98B co-founder and artistic director Mark Salvatus and co-founder/program and research development director Mayumi Hirano’s alternative pop-up back in 2012. Their hope is that the other building owners will follow suit and join the movement to revive a stricken district.

Today, FUB’s elegant bones remain intact, but inside, hip bar Fred’s Revolucion and The Den, a cofee place owned by 98B co-founder/operations director Gabriel Villegas and two other partners, occupy a section of the ground floor.

Hub: Make Lab is another area where startups can set up

From left: First United Building’s Lorraine and Robert Sylianteng with 98B COLLABoratory’s Marika Constantino and Gabriel VIllegas.

their trial shops. The upper floors are now rented out to artists, architects, designers, and innovative new businesses such as Manila Who, a tour operator that ofers storydriven walkabouts that involve games. 98B has moved to a room next to a community museum dedicated to FUB’s beloved patriarch, the Fujian-born businessman Sy Lian Teng, Robert’s father who made his fortune in Escolta.

It may take a while for the street’s old timers to shift from a revenue-driven mindset, as was the case with the Syliantengs. The lack of government support is a hindrance since rehabilitating and restoring historic structures like FUB costs money. “Escolta wasn’t ready yet,” Constantino replied when asked why her first proposal to establish an artist residency program fell through. But a few incidents lead to the Syliantengs’ change of heart. A daughter showed them how creatives masterminded Brooklyn’s revival. During a dialogue with architects, the couple was moved by fond recollections about Escolta. It was then that Lorraine Sylianteng realized, “may nagmamahal pa pala sa Escolta.” – JUDE C. DEFENSOR

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RETROFITTING HERITAGE

A project illuminates historically-prized

PHOTO BY MILO SOGUECO

The Far Eastern University’s Art Deco facade stands proudly above Quezon Boulevard’s chaotic collision of sounds, colors, and forms. The school’s beauty isn’t skin-deep; beyond lies a gem of a campus, meticulously preserved by its beloved Chairman Emeritus, Lourdes Montinola.

Past FEU’s gates, the tempo is gentle and the mood, buoyant. Students can be seen practicing arnis, playing volleyball, or strolling on the rigid quadrangle softened with lush landscaping. There is formality to the architectural tableau, with stately structures lined up along the central sprawl’s fringes. A memorial flagpole dedicated to FEU’s founder, Dr. Nicanor Reyes, is surrounded by life-size copper sculptures

by National Artist Vicente Manansala while at the far end, an austere grandstand made from cream-colored stone draws the eye. Inside some of the buildings, a few of which were recognized by UNESCO, commissioned art by Filipino masters hang on walls.

“Lourdes Montinola has a strong vision for the FEU campus as a culturally important place,” explained lighting designer Claude Mark Wilson, who, together with his WE Design business partner, architect Nikki Escalona-Tayag, is tasked with installing exterior lights on some of the campus’

storied structures’ exteriors. Montinola’s sweeping commitment was formalized with the establishment of the President’s Committee on Culture, which according to its director, Martin Lopez, “provides art and culture experiences to the FEU community through heritage tours of the Manila campus, as well as the presentation of quality productions.”

Montinola’s manifesto is grounded on reality, revealing her recognition of both nostalgia and modernity. Old buildings were retrofitted to adapt to the present, with features such as heat-deflective glass panes, LED lighting, and, of course, WiFi. It is also unequivocally inclusive; most of the cultural shows and the campus tours are open to the public.

With the lighting project, even pedestrians will be able to appreciate the school’s heritage buildings. The FEU community is also engaged in the restoration process. At one time, Montinola decided against restoring the original font of the school’s logo because of a deep afection for the Baybayin-inspired letters.

In a few months’ time, Wilson and EscalonaTayag will complete the lighting project. The gesture will illuminate some of the country’s architectural jewels, as well as a passionate cultural advocate’s generous vision. —JUDE C. DEFENSOR

From left: FEU PCC director Martin Lopez with WE Design’s Claude Mark WIlson and Nikki EscalonaTayag by the facade of an Art Deco building in FEU’s Morayta campus.

Is Jerry Acuzar an unlikely savior of the country’s heritage structures, or is he, like his detractors size him up to be, a businessman salvaging precious historical buildings for his own gain? JEROME GOMEZ paints a portrait of the selfmade millionaire behind the 400-hectare Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar to understand the man behind a wonderland.

Photographs by Jason Quibilan

Jerry Acuzar is telling me about his acquisitions like a proud combat general introducing a seasoned platoon.

“Yang bahay na yan ang nagpalaki kay Diosdado Macapagal,” he says when I point to the house known as Casa Lubao built in the 1920s by a couple named Valentin Arrastria and Francisco Salgado. “Yung pamilya na ‘yan may inalagaang Hapon during the war.” he family took the Japanese under their care, employing him as driver and gardener. Only later on would they learn he was a spy. A colonel in the Japanese army, he would return the favor when Pampanga was being burned down during WWII: the colonel asked his comrades to spare the house of the kind hacienderos who took him under their wing. “hat’s Bellas Artes,” Acuzar says when I lead his eyes to a nearby structure, a traditional bahay na bato with its second loor entirely in wood and painted white. “It was considered the most beautiful house during its time,” Acuzar tells me. It was the home of the artist Rafael Enriquez y Villanueva, a painter whose parents insisted their son pursue law studies in Spain. And he did—but would pursue art again in his return to the country, transforming the house’s mezzanine into a studio which would become a training ground to future masters: Fernando Amorsolo, Fabian dela Rosa, Guillermo Tolentino, and Botong Francisco among them. he building used to stand proud in Quiapo’s famed Hidalgo Street before it was sold to a Chinese family. Over the decades, it had gone on through diferent incarnations: a bowling alley, a brothel, a boarding house. “Nang makita ko os giba-giba na,” Acuzar recalls. “Maganda ang storya ng bahay na ‘yan ‘Yan ang pinakamamahal kong bahay dito.” t is almost sundown in Bataan, and we are at the 400-hectare.

Bagac property that Jose “Jerry” Acuzar, the architect and self-made millionaire, turned into a heritage and conservation center called Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar in the early part of the 2000s. He would uproot historically important old houses, sometimes already in near crumbling, very depressing condition, and transfer them to this Bataan sprawl, restoring the structure to its original glory as much as he could, brick by brick, plank by plank, replacing already-missing parts by sourcing or creating new ones. Of houses that were lost during the war years, he would make replicas of from existing drawings, and now they line up the Las Casas shoreline, sort of shielding the more valuable, more fragile restored houses from the elements of the ocean. Sometimes it’s just the façade that he reconstructs, the bones, as in the building we are standing from: the Hotel de Oriente whose exterior is exactly like that of the hotel it took its name from, the irst luxury hotel in the Philippines. “Ang telephone number nila number 2, kasi yung number 1 sa Malacañang,” the architect ofers. Once we step into the structure’s main lobby, however, a totally diferent sight beholds—one born exclusively from the owner’s imagination: ornate wall patterns everywhere, godlike statues hanging from above, an intricately carved ceiling, and a wood parquet rendering of the Spoliarium as piece de resistance.

It is here where Acuzar would tell me his stories from childhood, his student days at the Manuel L. Quezon University in Quiapo, and what brought him to building this theme park cum museum cum resort that houses heritage gems from diferent parts of the country. When he talks about the back stories of each house, his language unconsciously lets on that he is really more businessman than conservationist, more builder than history enthusiast. And sure enough, that is how he started, he admits, but he has, over the years, grown to have a deeper appreciation for these signiicant structures, their relevance and maintenance, and his role as their rightful custodian. He talks with the conidence of someone who came

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THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER

Jam Acuzar at the heritage park’s Escuela de Bellas Artes.

She was finishing her Art History and Economics studies in Paris when her father Jerry started working on Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar. She now heads the art foundation Bellas Artes Projects which initiates collaborations with local and foreign artists in the hopes of creating projects that engage and benefit the park’s surrounding communities. Opposite: the workshop inside the Escuela de Bellas Artes.

to help send each other to school. Hard work is inherent in the fabric of the Acuzar family. he young Jerry, even while he was studying architecture in college, was already clocking in time at the National Housing Authority.

“Pag-usapan natin ang lungkot,” he tells me—because he never considered back-breaking work or the simple life he grew up in a struggle at all. After college graduation, the Acuzars found out that the house they built and were living in stood on a lot that turned out not to be their own. hey were soon sent packing and moved to the house of one of Jerry’s siblings located near the market. In this new nestling place, he and his parents shared a room. “Doon ko naramdaman yung lungkot,” he says. he house they left was where Acuzar was born. “Lumaki ako lahat-lahat do’n, doon ko nakita yung mundo ko.” Some days he still cries at this memory. “Kasi naaawa ako hindi para sa sarili ko, naawa ako para sa tatay at nanay ko.” he sight of his parents packing their things from the old house broke his young heart. He promised one day he would buy his parents a house and lot of their own.

He was able to do more than that, of course. Acuzar would go into construction after graduation and would make his fortune in the industry.

Now his own company, the New San Jose Builders Inc. constructs high-rises and developments for both government arms and private corporations. he irm’s most important undertaking, next to Las Casas, is the mammoth Philippine Arena in Bulacan, the largest indoor arena in the world, standing on 140 hectares of land and boasting a capacity of 55,000 people. Acuzar was on top of the project’s management, spending days and nights in the site. It was expected to be completed within ive years, but to deliver in two, to the detriment of his health. “Dun ako ry) eh,” he recalls, regret barely showing in his voice. from humble beginnings and did exceedingly well for himself. While he guy has come a long way, and perhaps because he roaming around the Las Casas premises, often trailed by a small entourage is seeing it all now in retrospect, narrating his rise in of engineers and assistants, he is always in shorts and nondescript shirts, his usual no-frills, straightforward manner, he makes which is exactly what he is wearing sitting across me inside Hotel de it all sound easy. Even if it wasn’t. Perhaps it is his Oriente, his missing left hand resting near the pocket of his shorts that I humble beginnings that informs his decidedly practical wonder whether he is making an efort to make it inconspicuous. way of tackling things, including the issue of heritage he missing hand. It takes a while before I get to ask about it but I conservation which will perhaps continue to hound eventually get to it. It is a touchstone to his beginnings. He was 13 years him for far longer. Acuzar’s method of preserving heritage houses and old and he and his father were selling ice drop and ice cream in a town buildings is not without its set of detractors. Historians insist that the best iesta. It was one of those times when father and son were not bound way to preserve a historic landmark is have it stay in situ— right where it by contractual work at a construction site. Equipped with an amusing was built. Critics were up in arms when he bought the Alberto Mansion personality, the young Jerry was an efective salesman, and even possessed in Calamba, the ancestral home of Jose Rizal’s mother, and where the great business savvy. “Yung perang pinagtindahan ng ice drop, ibibili ko ng National Hero had likely spent some of his boyhood years. But the Alberto bote,” he tells me. he bottles he would then sell to bote garapa shops. “Mas Mansion had long fallen into ruin before Acuzar came along and the malaki kita mo sa bote kaysa ice drop. Dalawang tubo ka.” His earnings from owner was only too willing to sell the property. After some loud protests by selling ice drop would go straight to his mother while the sales from the activists through social media, and the intervention of the United Artists bote garapa he secretly got to keep. “E di pagdating sa eskwelahan mayaman for Cultural Conservation and Development, Inc., the transfer of the ako. Yung mga kaklase ko ang baon diyes sentimos. Ang baon ko piso. Kaya ako entirety of the building from Biñan to Bataan was put to a halt. maraming barkada. ‘Tara. Kain tayong lahat!’ O, nood kaming sine, barkada He has been accused, by his critics, of “hoarding” the heritage homes kasama ko. Libre ko sila lahat!” On one of these ice drop selling trips, the for his own proit and gain, but some historians who accident happened. he jeep they were riding fell have actually stepped foot into Las Casas Filipinas on its side and consequently crushed young Jerry’s have learned to soften their stand. While not fully Critics were up in arm. At 13, losing an arm might cause lesser kids to on his ways, some of them have understood arms when he bought agreeing retreat from the world, but Acuzar was back in the what he’s trying to do. Acuzar himself acknowledges rhythm of things in no time. his was, after all, a kid the ancestral home of the reality that, ideally, these homes should stay who at nine or 10 was already a jueteng collector, and their original locations, but sadly heritage Rizal’s mother, where inpreservation was dealing ice drops by recruiting a group of kids is not at the top of the Philippine to sell them while he hied of to swim in the nearby the National Hero government’s list of priorities. he way Acuzar sees river in Mariveles. he is only doing what he can while there is still had likely spent some it, Life was simple for the Acuzars in the province. something to save. hey had a beautiful bahay kubo with a space of his boyhood years.

He cites Quiapo, for example, a place he is so underneath enough to take care of ducks and attached to because he is a devotee of the Nazareno But it has long fallen and spent his college years there. he old houses chicken. His father was a jack of all trades, and worked at whatever job he could get. Acuzar into ruin before in the area, he says, deteriorate because of the describes his father as a happy man who worried very surroundings, of the owners’ children bickering about Acuzar came along little. he children pitched in with the family income ownership and responsibilities that maintenance

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THE CALL OF BATAAN

The Unagol River cuts through the entire Las Casas property, and is surrounded by ricefields and mountains. The house in this photograph used to be called Casa Alcuaz after its original owners—believed to be a veru vain lady who adored jewelry—but has recently been changed to Casa New Manila. Opposite: the Casa Hagonoy, originally from Bulacan, with the Casa Ladrillo behind it.

becomes the least of the concerns. “So, since walang nagme-maintain, nawawalan ng value yung bahay, lupa na lang [ang may value],” Acuzar says. “Madaming bahay sa Quiapo na nasira nang gano’n lang. Lalo na sa Arlegui, ang gaganda ng bahay do’n, kasi parang Forbes Park yung Quiapo dati. Nandiyan sila Tuason. Sila Tampingco diyan nakatira…Ang ganda ng Quiapo nung araw. Estero, lahat malinis.” But when the homeowners started moving out because of congestion, they started renting out their homes, and these houses became places for business, its residents unable to contribute to its upkeep. he care for the structures—a lot of them made of wood and therefore preservation is more complicated and diicult— became secondary concern. “Ako ang pilosopiya ko, gawin ko muna kaysa mawala. Kung may ayaw, di pag-usapan ulit [kung paano ibalik], basta ang pinaka-praktikal, ang common sense, bago mawala, makuha na natin, tsaka na pag-usapan yung issue. So kesyo usap nang usap ng issue, marami tayong pinag-uusapan, nabulok na, nawala na. Ano pang pag-uusapan natin? Gano’n ang nangyari. Sa’kin, di bale may issue basta na-save natin.”

Not that he didn’t consider keeping them in their original locations, he did, but he knew it wouldn’t work right away. He knew he didn’t have much inluence in the government, but he had the money to do something.

Acuzar didn’t start out rebuilding old houses. About 15 years ago, he bought his irst old house and simply salvaged what he could from it and incorporated the pieces to a modern home. “Ang exciting do’n yung ginigiba.

Nakikita mo na ganito pala nilalagay yung bintana, sinusuksok lang. Yung method ng construction nakikita mo. Nung nakita ko, di ko alam ha bakit pumasok sa isip ko, na sa susunod di ko na siya gigibain.” he sight of a home literally torn apart did not please him. “Tinanggal mo na yung ulo, tinanggal mo na yung kamay, tinanggal mo na yung paa. So nawala siya.” After that, he decided he would buy a house again but this time, he wouldn’t dismantle it. He would just move it, lock, stock and barrel to Bataan. Someone told him about a house in Cagayan selling for P60,000. He paid a moving truck

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P30,000 for the transfer. “Meron na ‘kong 70-sqm na bahay na puro kahoy. Ang gaganda ng poste.” One day, one of his cousins challenged him to do the same with a bahay na bato, a real Spanish colonial house. he irst house he bought of this nature was the Meycauayan House, a sizeable piece that took him and his team three years to rebuild. It was all trial and error in the beginning. hey got the stairs wrong, and wood and other materials ran out. “Where were we supposed to get wood? If you put new wood in, it’s not going to work.”

He researched, read books. When he and his family travelled to Europe, he looked for tomes on heritage preservation, explored antique houses and shops. “Yun and naging mundo ko,” he says. “Kapag wala ako at malungkot ako, andun ako sa mga antique shop.” He would frequent the second hand stores in Kamuning. He enjoyed inspecting, running his hands on pre-loved objects. . “Kahit na meron akong isang milyon sa bulsa.” He credits is mentor when it comes to antiques.

Chinese friend from Taiwan saw what Jerry was doing in his Bataan property and encouraged him to turn it into a “world-class development.” Jerry thought about it and decided to go with the idea of a heritage park. He tore down the old houses he irst built on the property and drew up the plan that unfolded into what it is now, Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar. he heritage park cum resort has been open to the public since 2010.

He often walks around the resort in his shorts followed by an entourage of engineers, assistants, and someone carrying his cooler and foldable chair.

He observes the recent additions to the property. Not a brick escapes his observation. He talks with his team about any new things he wants to add, whether its a new detail of a boat, the pillar of a bridge. he work is never done. As long as there’s an old house to save, he says, Las Casas will remain a

work in progress. an upgrade. hey would order pansit and fried chicken in Bulaklak.

Of the homes he’s accumulated, the Bellas Artes is indeed the closest Long story short, his purchase of Bellas Artes meant acquiring a to him. It took a lot of back and forths with the Chinese seller before he keepsake of his younger years. He didn’t stop there. He even bought inally clinched the deal. he seller would up the price every chance he the MLQU. “E nung araw hindi ako makakuha ng test hangga’t ‘di ka got, and just when they inally agreed on something, nagbabayad ng tuition mo…Nangyari sa’kin yon eh.” he would tell Acuzar he was not selling anymore. But Walking into Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar friends like Jimmy Laya and Ramon Zaragosa would heritage park in Bataan is like walking into a period “Is it the houses remind him of its importance. Until seller and buyer ilm set, and it has attracted quite a few movie you collect or is it inally settled on a price, and Acuzar agreed to purchase shoots over the years, most memorably Heneral not just the structure but the land it was standing on.

Luna and Lav Diaz’s Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis. here the stories behind He says it cost him about P40 million. are guardia civils by the entrance, the staf are all in them,” I ask Acuzar. period costume, there was a working tranvia the last But there are a couple more reasons why Bellas I visited. Everywhere else, cobblestones, brick Artes is special to Acuzar. Its storied past is irresistible: The latter, he says, time walls and entire 18th and 19th century stone houses.

Juan Luna might have dropped by in the premises, and is what gives the he Umagol River cuts through the property and it produced a few National Artists. I ask him, “Is it the meets the West Philippine Sea right by the private houses you collect or is it the stories?” he latter he says structure value. beach and the line of replicas by the shore. his was is what gives the structure its value. Otherwise it’s just Otherwise it’s just all tall weeds and mud more than a mere decade another old house. he second reason is because as a Acuzar recalls, when he owned just a mere four young student in Manuel L. Quezon University, the another old house. ago, hectares of the land and built his family a beach Bellas Artes building was the symbol of a life outside house for half a million pesos. A beach house so of his means. “Tapat ng MLQ yan eh. Merong Bulaklak small that Acuzar could step on one of his children’s heads while making Restaurant do’n,” he begins. It was a Chinese tea house in the building his way out of the lone bedroom. hey would go to the beach on sunny that served pansit and fried chicken, and in those days his everyday days, but even during rainy season, all the Acuzar kids would go out and student meal at the dorm consisted mostly of tuyo and itlog, the practical play. “Ang tanong ko sa sarili ko, maganda ba ‘yung nangyari?” the architect sustenance for a student in a dorm without a refrigerator and with only says, pondering on his past and looking now at what he’s achieved. “Pero a manual stove that ran on gas. “Sa umaga, scrambled egg. Sa tanghali, masaya yung buhay namin noong araw—kahit ako. Siguro masaya kasi ganito sunny-side up. Sa gabi, hard-boiled egg,” he recalls the routine. Sometimes yung nangyari. Pero mas masarap ba yung nakaraan o mas masarap yung he would supplement his diet with banana cue. “Kapag kinain mo yung ngayon?” If Jerry Acuzar’s afection for the past is anything to go by, he banana cue para kang sinuntok sa tiyan, ang lalaki!” It was only when his already knows the answer. WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STEF JUAN siblings and parents would visit him in Quiapo that he his meals would get

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THE BOMBING OF A NATION From Mark Salvatus to Cos Zicarelli, Mark Barretto to Leeroy New, many of today’s most successful artists once practiced street art.

Paolo Enrico Melendez traces graffiti bombing’s emergence from urban subculture to gallery draw, and discovers one of Philippine art and design’s most remarkable stories.

Portraits by Johann Bona

G ARTWORK IMAGE COURTESY OF EGG FIASCO

You could not have entered Post at Cubao Expo last September 11 even if your entire street cred depended on it.

decidedly youthful way. And the crowd had still not thinned enough for me to get in by the time I decided to leave for home.

THAT THE CROWD was huge wasn’t surprising. PSP, after all, is one of the largest street art communities in the Philippines. Egg Fiasco, one of the country’s most prominent he crowd that crammed the gallery spilled out onto the pavement and street artists, and a second-generation member, tells me that the Post well past the Expo’s gate. A staccato of rude language reported under a exhibit was the third of the year, with two more lined up, to celebrate haze of cigarette smoke and the scents of booze and body odor. Overheard the group’s 10 years. “Diverse ang grupo,” he says, and enumerates the on Romulo Avenue: the slap, bang, and grind of skaters doing rails on the members that include graphic designers, photographers, and college cement gutter. professors, aside from the usual graiti bombers and visual artists.

If you were as desperate as I was to get into Pilipinas Street Plan’s (PSP) “UST boys, tapos nahikayat iyong iba,” says visual artist and music video tenth anniversary exhibit, standing on tiptoe outside Post to rubberneck was director Jay Pacena of the beginnings of a small group called Manila Street enough to get by while waiting for the crowd to thin.

Plan, which would congregate in places like Louie Cordero’s indie gallery, hrough the windows I saw anthropomorphic ticks, drawings of Future Prospects. Pacena clariies that he was more supporter than tattooed lumad, alien brains and monster pineapples, practitioner, given his conceptual idea of street art: “Pag lumabas ka sa the stencils of samurai mask and nightmare balloon THE BONES OF YOU kalye, ikaw na yung art,” he laughs.

Above: Visionary and eyes made to look like hearts and hearts made to Spunk, by Egg Fiasco But the group, with founding members and now-prominent artists look like eyes. Someone behind me started playing a for Secret Fresh at Art such as Mark Salvatus, Mark Barretto, Mutation Nation (now known Fair 2015. The artist is rap joint on his phone, an old one, both the song and as Okto), Buen Calubayan, Wesley Valenzuela, and Cos Zicarelli, one of the country’s the phone. most renowned street did just that, and soon attracted like-minded individuals from other his was the art gallery scene snatched from the art practictioners. He universities and cities in Manila and across the country. With artists has since made the prim set and proper clique, the patron patrol and representing Cavite, Cebu, and Davao, the group changed its name to gallery breakthrough. vernissage VIPS. Street art had come of age in a both here and abroad relect its nationwide status.

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IN ITS MOST CYNICAL FORM, GANGS USE IT TO MARK TERRITORY. FIASCO ADMITS TO PREVIOUSLY HAVING A SIMILAR MINDSET. “DESTROY KAMI DATI EH”

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And nationwide it has become. You and I have seen it, on alley walls and building facades. Under bridges are inscrutable squiggles in reds and whites, the letters brought to the farthest logical compressions and extensions that design can imagine. here are stenciled rabbits on Julia Vargas. Small footprints starting suddenly and ending nowhere along Morayta. he question “Why?” in elegant script spray-painted on plant boxes along EDSA and Chino Roces Avenue, Makati.

Once a subculture lumped together with other forms of public disturbance, street art has become so accepted that it is now part of daily language. Hell, after hearing about this story I was writing, my mother asked me which “collective” I was talking to as a primary source. And she used that word as comfortably as she sat on the sofa, her favorite primetime videoke singing contest blaring on TV, Miley Cyrus and Alicia Keys and Adam Levine spouting cliché after sparkly cliché.

HOW IN THE WORLD did graiti in the Philippines get to where it is today? It’s a baling turn, when one considers the roots of the form. For one, it started out as an individual thing. “Paisa-isa lang, tapos walang pangalan,” Pacena says of the early days. More signiicantly, it used to be taboo. University of the Philippines Los Baños sociology professor Raphael Villaseñor considers graiti, in its strictest sense, an act of deviancy, since “It’s done in a place where it is not meant to be done.”

And indeed, in other countries, graiti is of a decidedly confrontational bent. Protesters under repressive regimes tag walls with political caricatures as an open expression of dissent. In its most cynical form, gangs use it to mark territory. Egg Fiasco admits to previously having a similar mindset.

“Destroy kami dati e,” he says.

Villaseñor cites the Broken Window heory as one argument used by authorities against graiti. “It states that if petty crimes are allowed, this would give way to bigger crimes being committed,” he says.

Crackdown is thus tough. “’Di ko na mabilang,” Egg Fiasco says of the number of times he has been accosted, confronted, or straight up busted. he penalty is usually light—community service, bribes—but some PSP members have been caned by night watchmen or pistol-whipped by cops.

Security guards are the most aggressive. “Bukas, ‘pag nakita na ‘yan ng amo namin, wala na kaming trabaho!” they growled to Egg Fiasco mid-scule.

So it is usually up to the artist to get creative when it comes to getting out of the bust. “Nagbreak kasi kami ng girlfriend ko e,” Egg Fiasco would tell a cop, who would then dispense avuncular advice before setting the artist free; Egg Fiasco would be back to bombing that same night, in a diferent location.

ONCE, WHILE BOMBING an abandoned bank in New Manila, Egg Fiasco heard the whoop of an approaching patrol car’s siren. Summoned, he got a talking to from what looked like a newly graduated cop, who was polite, but nonetheless condescending. “Ang tanda ko na, nagpapasaway pa ako,” Egg Fiasco thought as soon as the cops drove away. He resolved to go out exclusively in the mornings, choosing only the dingiest spots, and adjusting his design so that his work gave the surroundings much-needed character.

Egg Fiasco tells me that crews have unwritten laws. “Turn of kami kapag may graiti artists na nagta-tag sa private vehicles,” he begins. “Or religious monuments. You have to respect that stuf.” Schools and burial grounds are likewise of limits, unless consent is given. “Iba kasi kapag may paalam.”

If that incident in New Manila was Egg Fiasco’s personal turning point, Pacena cites a communal one: critical practice. Whereas things used to be all about design—how to it a work, make it nice and noticeable—“few really challenged themselves,” Pacena says. his changed when practitioners such as Salvatus were given the chance to bring graiti to more formal institutions such as schools and museums. “Nagkaroon ng mas malawak na discussion about the practice of street art,” Pacena says. He cites one particular intervention of Leeroy New, in which he draped Napoleon Abueva’s iconic UP waiting shed in a canvass dotted with New’s signature spheres of otherwordly design. his pushed graiti artists to a new appreciation of what they were capable of. “Pagkakataon ko ito. Kailangan may makuha sila sa trabaho ko,” says Pacena of the radical mindset. To his estimation, this aesthetic conversation has been almost two decades in the running, which explains why the form feels so ripe these days.

THE PRACTIONER AND THE SCHOLAR

Below: Visual artist and music video director Jay Pacena, one of the founding members of Pilipinas Street Plan. Previous page: Egg Fiasco with one of his works under the Realms collection, for Blanc Gallery.

OFF THE WALL

Above: Pilandok for #ARTBGC Festival 2016. Opposite, from top: EGGTEQ for Second Skin at Secret Fresh. Punso, for the Realms exhibit at Blanc Gallery

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‘PILANDOK’ AND ‘EGGTEQ’ IMAGES COURTESY OF EGG FIASCO

WITH THIS NEW MATURITY comes an unprecedented acceptance in the neighborhoods where street art is performed. PSP members have interacted with the people who live around their artworks.

“Natutuwa na sila,” Egg Fiasco says. “Kung pupunta ka sa tindihan, landmark mo na ‘yon.” Tricycle and jeepney drivers have even asked members of Egg Fiasco’s crew to touch up their rides.

Villaseñor agrees, particularly on street art with a more progressive messaging. “I feel happy because that kind of street art tells me that the struggle is alive, that what I discuss inside classrooms is also mirrored and echoed out in the streets, highways, in public places—even in the face of increasing gentriication by the private sector of these spheres that are meant for the public to commune with in the irst place.”

Some pesky notions persist. “Sino nagbayad sa ‘yo para diyan?” is still a question people frequently ask Egg Fiasco, who has no simple answer.

“Materials pa lang, mahal na,” he concedes. “Pero unselish e. Usually, when we do art, it’s for ourselves, a personal thing. Sa street art, iba.”

And if the public has become more welcoming, so have the curators and the galleries. Pacena says the maturing critical practice has given the community the aesthetic depth needed to make the gallery breakthrough.

PSP has been the irst group to be invited to exhibit at the National Museum, the Lopez Museum, and at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. It also helped that street artists have widened their scope to include other media, such as toy making, T-shirt design, tattooing, and even designer furniture crafting. his helped others get picked up by the more adventurous curators, such as Bigboy Cheng of Secret Fresh. Other galleries have followed suit.

As of press time, most of the PSP founders are on residencies abroad: Dubai, Sweden, and the United States, to name a few. Pacena leaves in a couple of weeks for Japan, for a third residency. Other PSP members are being shown in concurrent exhibitions at Blanc and the CCP. And Egg Fiasco himself has two ongoing exhibits. In fact, he has been so busy representing the Philippines abroad that he admits to having little graiti output for the past three years or so.

But that’s all good. Filipino graiti, or street art, or however you want to call it, is a ine example of a successful grassroots art movement. One

“DI KO NA MABILANG,” FIASCO SAYS OF THE NUMBER OF TIMES HE’S BEEN ACCOSTED, OR STRAIGHT UP BUSTED. “NAG-BREAK KASI KAMI NG GIRLFRIEND KO EH,” HE WOULD TELL A COP. that addresses the institution not in an escapist way, or a confrontational way, but in my estimation, in the manner Russian poet-activist Kirill Medvedev once put the ideal way, “a lexible, open, occasionally provocative, but, mainly independent, true to yourself and your ideas, alternative within the larger, general, social space.”

It’s not all roses, of course. Like all legit things, it stands to be coopted by the clueless. Take the attempts found along the perimeter of Camp Aguinaldo or the South Cemetery, the clunky boxes of color the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority calls art: lat, didactic things that miss the point entirely. And then there are the more militant of minds, who think that going to galleries is a form of selling out; one of the most proliic graiti artists has gone so far as to use a gender slur to delineate graiti from street art. To them, street is street, and the rest is kitsch. hankfully, these do not faze the likes of Egg Fiasco, whose bottom line is still the thrill of the practice. Finding that perfect spot, that ideal weathered texture of surface, the visibility to passersby, choosing the colors, ignoring that nagging knowledge that weather and authorities and fads stand to obliterate all your hard work—the immediate, impulsive, risky business of it all. And going on to work, despite, or because of, everything.

“We think of ourselves as a sharing community,” Egg Fiasco says. “Uy, nakita ko work mo,” street artists will often say to each other, without even being privy to real names. It’s like saying “What’s up?”

Toward the middle of our talk, Egg Fiasco tells me that he can’t wait for the rainy season to end so that he can go out and bomb. By the end of our conversation, such is his enthusiasm that he amends his earlier statement: “Gusto ko na tuloy i-ditch mga trabaho ko.” Which sounded strange in a great way to me, because if all this were anything to go by, nobody did any ditching in the irst place.

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THE YEARS WHEN HE WAS

Eric Paras’s world of objets d’art and midcentury moderns betrays nothing of his past in the underground movement. Manila’s savant of good taste sits down with CES RODRIGUEZ to talk about the brief period he held an M16 Armalite for training, shot to the top ranks of the NDF’s student organizers, and assumed a nom de guerre

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Eric Paras, now 57, clearly remembers the day he turned 20.

DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS

Opposite: Paras, a bit heftier a year after he cut ties with the underground movement and returned to the family home in Tarlac. “Dumating na sa time na, hindi na ako ito. Doon ko naisip sarili ko.”

Previous page, from top: The boy Eric, son of an army colonel and an enterprising mom; Christmas 1981, a few months after he left his life as a kadre; at his graduation rites at the UP, four years after quitting the movement.

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“Naglalaba ako sa batis. Ang ganda-ganda pa ng scene na puro bato. Ang ganda ng bundok nu’n. Tapos yung tubig very clear; puwede mong inumin. Tapos yung mga kapwa NPA mo naliligo—may pagka-sexy ng kaunti.” he brook was somewhere in the mountains of Bicol, close to the border of Quezon and Camarines Sur. he day was January 21, 1979. he NPA was the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) who lived by the Maoist dictum that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” At the time Paras joined them for an “exposure trip to warfare” as part of the grooming process of being a full-ledged member of the CPP, the NPA had been waging guerilla warfare against the Philippine government for the past 10 years.

Paras tells us the story in one of six houses he rents in a quietly stylish compound in Pasay, the 20-home residential property built between the 1950s and the 1960s. Removed from the urban grit of the street outside, the compound has the feel of an old Sampaguita-LVN Pictures romantic comedy, where leading men who looked like Pancho Magalona wore meticulously pressed linen suits and dangled their cigarettes just so from between their ingers.

Here, the designer has turned ive of those houses into a showroom for his interior design irm A11, an events and arts space, and warehouses for his inventory of eclectic midcentury modern-inspired furniture and found objects.

He designed the nearby Henry Hotel, which occupies another ive separate houses, and is neighborly with fashion designer Jojie Lloren. he Avellana Art Gallery occupies the house right across Paras’s private residence.

“So naglalaba akong ganyan ta’s naisip ko, ‘Ay, birthday ko pala.’ Siguro naka-ive days na ako noon,” he recalls, in his usual polite, unhurried manner of speaking, of his immersion training with the armed wing of the organization he had dropped out of his Agriculture course at the University of the Philippines Los Baños for and joined full time three years earlier.

“Wala lang,” he says. “Wala naman nagse-celebrate ng birthday doon, e.”

He spent the next 10 days at camp learning to ire and clean an M16 Armalite, cooking lunch and dinner for a squadron of 20 out of foraged greens [recipe on opposite page], and marveling nonstop at how beautiful it all was, high with the idea that he was, at 20, in a good place.

One mass meeting called by the NPA for sympathetic villagers was held in a mountaintop area with a gorge or sheer drop on one side and an expanse of grassland on the other. “Nandu’n lang kami. Parang Sound of Music.”

But that’s not all.

“Tapos ‘pag gabi merong medyo sexual pa. Magkakatabi kayo ng mga NPA kadre. Merong isang bagets doon na katabi ko na ‘pag alam mong tulog na, dinidikit niya yung ano niya sa ‘kin, erection. Siyempre hindi mo papansinin ‘yon. Dinidikit niya talaga. Alam niya pero siyempre bawal.” he NPA had strict rules of conduct. “Bawal ang sexual advances, magbiro man, or tumingin ka ng medyo iba, hindi puwede.” Such breaches were called sexual opportunism.

COMRADES DE CUISINE THE KITCHEN STRUGGLE IS REAL Back when he was in an “exposure trip to warfare” in the mountains of Bicol because he was being “groomed” to be an NDF top dog, Eric Paras was, like any other cadre, tasked with routines that kept NPA camp life humming. One of these was kitchen duties.

How to feed a squadron of 20 on a budget of scarcities?

The kitchen duty comrades before him relied on a lot of gata for their dishes, their area being Bicol. But there must be more to sustenance than gatang langka.

Here’s the recipe of what he came up with:

“Hindi ka puwede manligaw. Bawal yung mga afairs.

Kung manligaw ka, it should be oicial. Ia-announce mo na gusto mo ligawan si ano. Merong permission.”

In the movement, emotions should be in the context of the ideological. Ideology was king. It was tough, he admits.

“Yung mga comrades mong NPA may mga gwapo. Siyempre na-excite kang pinipigilan mo lang. Merong kamukha ni Dennis Roldan,” he says. Others looked like a young William Martinez.

In the Marxist-Leninist ideal espoused by the NPA, homosexuality was forbidden.

“Pero bading na ako noon. Sinu-suppress ko. Bago ako pumasok sa protest movement, nagkaroon ako ng mutual relationship du’n sa isang dormmate ko… Na-inluence ko, sumama rin siya.”

His sexual orientation wasn’t a secret in his family either…though it was never openly acknowledged, much less discussed. “Kasi high school out ako, e.”

He never “came out” in the Western sense of setting up a face-to-face confession with family and peers. “Hindi namin pinag-uusapan. ‘Pag Catholic, ganu’n di ba? Assume na lang.

Tahimik ka na lang…. Sa atin it’s more pakiramdaman. You don’t have to say it.” he family attunes itself to its own set of clues when it comes to a homosexual family member, and responds accordingly—either by silent acceptance or by browbeating all “tendencies” out of the child.

Paras’s case was even more out of the box if one considers the trope. His dad was a colonel in the Philippine Army, his mom the product of a landed family he describes as “iba mag-deal ng maids, matapang.” Both subscribed to Proverbs 13:24, widely interpreted as “spare the rod, spoil the child.” It was part of good child-rearing practices at the time, not the criminal act it is today. In the Paras household, it meant “palo, sinturon, tinatali sa bintana.”

But Paras describes his father as “very cool… never siya naging tyrant or controlling.” His mom took on the role of bad cop, a “kontrabida,” he says. “Anong tawag do’n? Killjoy.”

Paras was the third of seven children born to Edmundo Paras, who never got to graduate from the Philippine Military Academy because World War II intervened, and

Joseina Tañedo, a pharmacist and entrepreneur. hey lived in a bungalow in what was then a new housing subdivision outside Tarlac, a place Paras describes as pretty and very American. he house, he adds, was put up by his mother. “Yung salary ng military man wasn’t enough even for us.” Paras’s father made P1,000 a month, a princely sum at that time— but there were seven mouths to feed, clothe, and send to school. His mother had a day job at the provincial hospital.

She also owned a drug store where she allowed komiks vendors to set up their stall outside the botika in exchange for her son being able to read the latest issues for free. She also had her own real estate business.

Paras spent much of his childhood indoors because he had asthma. Isolated from friends and activities, he nurtured his love of the arts. He recalls cutting out pages from Life magazine and turning them into wallpaper to decorate his room. He dreamt of being a painter. He laughs his subdued laugh at this memory: “Meron pa akong pagsumpa sa kuya ko ‘pag nag-aaway kami: ‘Pag sumikat akong artist, kakalimutan kita.’”

His father worked in Fort Bonifacio and would go home on weekends. He had no vices and would busy himself in the garden. He was generous and honest. Paras recalls overhearing his dad and his colleagues talking about corruption within the military, naming generals who were on the take.

“Doon ko ina-idolize father ko, kasi straight siya. Hindi siya part of the corruption sa military. Tapos lagi niyang vina-value ang pagiging honest, hindi dapat magnakaw.

Tapos yung character, yun lang puwede ipamana sa amin—magandang pangalan. Education. Wala siyang mapapamanang wealth. Kaya alam namin na kung mamamatay sila, wala kaming mamanahin.”

Paras credits his father for nurturing his idealism. “Yun din yung… bakit naging curious din ako mag-join ng mga organizations.”

Paras decided to enroll in UP Los Baños after being enamored of the campus during a high school ield trip.

UPLB was freshly spruced at that time, thanks to the many grants Paras says Imelda Marcos raised for the institution.

Ingredients: • 1 can sardines • 1 bandehado of water • Foraged talbos ng kamote • Optional: garlic, onion, salt, pepper, seasoning Procedure: • If available, saute sardines in garlic or onion (both if extravagant).

• Otherwise, just dump sardines in a bandehado of water over an open flame to make stock.

• Once mixture is to your liking, add foraged greens.

• Add salt and pepper if available or whatever seasoning is on hand.

• Serve with rice.

“Ano lang yata ‘yon, lunch and dinner,” Paras says.

Breakfast, meanwhile, was the same every day.

“Tinapay na may sinunog na bigas na kape. Meron kaming kawa. Papabrown lang yung rice tapos lalagyan ng tubig, papakuluan yon. Yun na yung kape. Ang bango-bango.”

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Never mind if he had really wanted to pursue a Fine Arts degree, or alternatively major in Architecture.

After being conined mostly to home and school in Tarlac, he was eager to break free. All he aspired for then was to enjoy college life. He joined the art group Bigkis Sining. He was drafted as an editorial illustrator for the college paper UPLB Perspective. “Ginagawa ko yon kasi maganda yung stipend, not because of the job. P60 a month; malaki na yon. Makakabiyahe na ako sa Manila; makakabili na ako ng libro sa Erehwon. Tsaka Solidaridad, matapang na akong pumasok. Tsaka ang ganda ng Ermita noon.”

Unbeknownst to him, his art group had been iniltrated by an invisible cell of the Communist Party. It was the CPP-NPA’s MO, planting members in communities and campus organizations to inluence people from within.

Paras was swayed. “Yung naghahanap ka ng relevance na dapat mangyari sa buhay mo. Idealistic ka. Something you can do,” he recalls.

His casual involvement—“wala, bohemian lang,” because he was always attracted to the idea of a bohemian existence, the ideals of the movement “na-develop na lang”—turned into full-time commitment during his third year. He spent the previous year immersed in protest art. He secretly formed the UPLB theater group Teatro Umalohokan, a word meaning “town crier” during pre-Spanish times.

He had “exposure trips” to leftist plays and productions in the Cultural Center of the Philippines and Philippine Educational heater Association. he message of every performance toed the party line but what resonated with him the most were theatrical productions that had a particularly creative element: the music of an UPSILON

He assumed the nom de guerre Frankie Castañeda, received orders via letters burned upon reading.

He became regional commander. production of Bertolt Brecht’s hreepenny Opera. Or UP Diliman’s Pagsambang Bayan. “It’s like a play about a mass tapos yung mga litany about protest. Tapos yung set design, namangha ako. Ginawa ni Rafael del Casal [now a portrait artist] yung bamboo spikes na kunyari may cadavers na nakatuhog. Very dramatic talaga. Na-inluence ako doon.”

When he worked on their own campus production of Supluhan Bayan, an award-winning balagtasan that had been turned into a fantasy, Paras did the production design, the costumes, and the sets.

“After that I decided to go full time [in the movement] pero parang hindi ako naging honest sa parents ko. Akala nila enrolled ako pero gumagawa na ako ng fulltime work.”

He rented a room outside the UPLB campus and assumed the nom de guerre Frankie Castañeda, an agricultural extension worker with a full back story on his family. He received orders from his superiors via courier or letter. And yes, he burned some of them upon reading. His main task was to organize cells around his area of operation. hen he became regional commander. By the time he left the movement, Paras was being groomed to head the “national youth; hahawakan namin lahat ng schools.”

Why did he rise so quickly? Paras tells stories of acing everything he set his mind to—a contest, a play, the

90 O C T O B E R 2016

documentary he would later make with UP Diliman Film School students, and the board exam he topped on the Interior Design course he eventually settled on following his split with the underground. He was competitive as hell, even as he phlegmatically denies it.

It was after one of the UPLB students who had gone into the war zone for her routine immersion got shot and killed that he began to rethink his involvement. “Hindi namin alam kung papano sasabihin sa parents niya,” he recalls, even if they all had a default script they could simply stick to in such eventualities.

‘Hindi ko pala kaya yung ganito.” He never knew or found out how her death had been explained. he misgivings he had buried rose to the fore: First, his sexuality. “Maski bading ako, idealist ako, so nagkaroon ako ng girlfriend na for formality lang. Sanctioned. Parang ipe-pair ka e.” he girl was in love with him “pero ako naman hindi,” he admits. “Ako rin pumili. Yung magliligawan kayo pero wala pang feelings. But because of the cause, kailagan ninyong magsama. You can have a family. Palalakihin mo anak mo na kasama sa movement. Tapos siyempre tinatago ko yung sexuality ko.” He pauses. “’Di naman tinatago, sinu-suppress.

“Isa rin sa mga issues ‘yon. Dumating din sa time na, hindi na ako ito, doon ko naisip sarili ko. Parang hindi mo na nakita sarili mo sa cause, sa movement.”

He also missed doing his art. “’Di ko na na-express yung talent ko, creativity. Parang wala na ako, it’s not me anymore.”

It was 1980, his third year as a fulltime cadre.

He told a comrade he was going to leave and may never return. “Siyempre I got a warning that I would be subject to disciplinary action. Pero I don’t care. I don’t want anymore.”

He returned to Tarlac. His mother—who had once cried over a photograph he sent of him holding an M16— took him in without a word. She thought he was back for the weekend but the weekend stretched to three weeks.

Still, she never asked questions. He asked her to man a refreshment kiosk at a Pantranco bus stop. He sold balut, soft drinks, and biscuits.

It was during the peak bus-riding season before All Saints’ Day that he bumped into an old high school friend who had told him about the UP Diliman’s Interior Design course. Paras was seriously thinking of going back to school to take up the Fine Arts or Architecture course he had junked in favor of studying in the UPLB campus—even if he was loath to return to the old haunt to get his clearance.

“Sabi niya, madali lang pumasok du’n kahit wala ka pang clearance. Tsaka gusto nila dumami estudyante nila.” hat serendipitous moment now inds us in his Pasay home, one he had once dreamed of living in, and which he has lived in for 12 years. He serves us wine, Coke, and aromatic teas. Dinner includes the best adobong pusit I have ever tasted, red rice, condiments like homemade rock salt, and chocolate trules with squirty mandarin slices. he house is eclectic intellectual. he mood is convivial. His guests double over at his disclosures. He sits, zen as a koan, as he unspools his story.

So, how does he feel now about his old life?

“Para sa akin it was a phase of my life. Pero yung stand ko still the same pero iba na lang yung approach, yung voluntary support that you can be involved with pero ‘di na masyado.

Inabsorb ko na yung buhay ko ngayon.”

He sees no conlict either in how he lives his life now.

“For me it’s another level. It’s another chapter. Hindi ko inisip na it’s something conlicting. May guilt kaya minsan hindi na ako nakikipag-communicate sa ibang comrades ko.

Guilt na in a way I abandoned them.

“Pero alam mo yung isang rason kung bakit ayaw ko is the expression of sexuality. Sa akin important yon.” His return to

PHOTO BY NEAL OSHIMA

civilian life meant “yung mga bagay na dinenay sa akin nung nasa bundok ako—boyfriends, sexual encounters—inenjoy ko lahat ‘yan.”

Later he would come across a newspaper photo showing two men getting married in the mountains. “Nire-recognize na nila ang same-sex marriage. Sabi ko, ‘Oh no, siguro kung nangyari ito noon, baka nandito pa ako sa kilusan.’”

Does he still believe in the armed struggle?

“Hindi na rin. Pati yung mga dati kong comrades civilian life na rin. Nung nalaman nila ako yung interior designer, ang daming kumokontak sa’kin for cofee. Just for get-togethers.

Yung ex-girlfriend ko sa movement, mag-cofee daw kami.

Ako yung ayaw humarap. Baka kasi malaman nila naging kliyente ko si …,” he says the name of a person he would rather we not mention because she belonged to a famed political family and, anyway, “dineny ko na as a client.” He quit from the project.

He credits his time with the movement for his maturity, assurance of self, and how he deals now with people: clients, colleagues, his staf.

And his main takeaway?

“Humility.”

His reply is unexpected. But then so is the dialectical

opposition of bucolic surroundings and the sight of a female cadre, her back split open by Armalite ire, being administered irst aid. Or in the reality of sentiment overriding ideology when a student named Patty is killed in the course of a routine immersion. Or in the way Paras speaks of the hardscrabble life he no longer lives.

“Alam mo noon, ang ganda-ganda,” he says of villages controlled by the NPA. “Parang you trust people. ‘Pag pumunta ka sa bahay nila, nandoon yung respect ng masa sa amin.” heir well-known acronym had already come to mean Nice People Around because they were so punctilious. “’Di mo puwedeng galawin anything sa bahay ng masa; magpaalam ka. Hindi ka siyempre puwedeng magnakaw.

Hindi ka puwedeng kumain ng food nila na hindi ka nagpapaalam o binibigay sa ‘yo. Dapat magdala ka.” he villagers, too, believed the NPA was the solution to their underprivileged lives. “Parang ito na. Kung may mamumuno ng bansa, alam mong gaganda ang buhay nila.

Dahil yung honor; alam mong walang corruption, honest ang mga tao.” hat dream never happened and who knows if it ever will. But at one point in his life, Eric Paras slipped into the underground and tried.

A NEW ORDER

Paras, photographed in 2011 for Rogue in his Pasay home where he lives and entertains. He says he fell in love with the place since seeing it and dreamed about renting one of the spaces in the compound.

He now occupies six houses in the property.

O C T O B E R 2016 91

ALL THAT GLITTERS

All of Ebensperger’s jewelry is handmade, therefore bespoke.

These are the ones she made for herself. Mirror in Bali ring, made from fine silver and amethyst. Opposite: Earring and ring made from 14K gold and ametrine; cuf made from sterling silver and ametrine.

IN FOCUS

gir l ’s

got

s p a r k l e MAKEUP BY JIM ROS, HAIR BY RAYMOND GALANG. SHOT ON LOCATION AT NATUZZI ITALIA, BONIFACIO HIGH STREET, THE FORT, TAGUIG.

She used to wear the diamonds. Now, Pamela Bähre Ebensperger is the one stringing them together, having left a life of modeling to study the aesthetic and cosmic properties of precious stones. A fascinating change in life path, for sure, but Jam Pascual learns from this runway veteran that the divine works in mysterious ways PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHANN BONA, DIGITAL IMAGING BY KATE FIELD

THERE’S A CERTAIN efect that Pamela Bähre Ebensperger has on you when you meet her for the very irst time. She walks like she’s still on a runway, smiles like she’s about to invoke a hex, and wears the kind of jewelry whose glint leaves you momentarily mesmerized. And then when she casually calls you “my dear”—as in “You know, my dear, I really do believe that happiness is a choice”— with the raspy voice of a gala-savvy doyenne, you’re done. he woman embodies her own brand of impeccable. Born in Chile to an Austrian mother and a German father, she started modeling at 13 when her family, once aluent, fell into poverty. here followed years of living out of her suitcase, traveling from country to country, until she grew tired of it. “Since the advent of Photoshop, any monkey could be a model,” she says with a guileless frankness. here’s a been-there-donethat sway to her gait.

So she went where she hadn’t been, did what she hadn’t done, and took up jewel-making classes in the Gemological Institute of America, putting into practice a desire that took root in her childhood, when she

FOR DETAILS ON THE JEWELRY, VISIT PAMELABAHRE.COM OR EMAIL P IMI DIVI NA@OVEX.US.

reminisced on the precious stones her mother used to own in wealthier days. She’d take hold of a ring, for example, and feel something there.

She’ll tell you the mineral kingdom stores cosmic energies. She’ll say that sailors carried citrines for safety at sea, or how sleeping with an amethyst under your pillow might cure your headache—which would normally sound like a load of malarkey until she tells you about the Babylonians, the ancient Egyptians, the amulets that still carry signiicance in the realm of national superstition.

She comes to the shoot with a selection of necklaces, earrings, and cufs that look like they could banish ghosts. he metal isn’t smoothed with blades but shaved by ire. Everything is beautiful. You don’t know why. She’ll tell you about clinical hypnotherapy and theta healing, and how her clients swear that shit works. You meet and speak to this woman, and you think maybe you believe in auras, maybe the charms at work are both social and crystal. Much like the mystical properties of stones, she’s the kind of woman who can’t be pinned down by logic. To encounter her is to understand there are greater forces at work.

O C T O B E R 2016 93

s

z arlo abuco i uel Naciancen a rz ee ay lafranc

4:00 AM

Intramuros, Manila I used to ride my motorcycle around the Intramuros area for Simbang Gabi a few years ago. Despite restoration eforts, there have been a few commercialized areas within the Walled City catering mostly to the student population. It is during this dark and quiet time that one feels the spirit of Old Manila.

JAKE VERZOSA

96 O C T O B E R 2016

6:00 PM

Poblacion, Makati It’s a neighborhood I’m familiar with. I live nearby and this is en route to my laundromat. Despite being known as a modern, inancial district, on the literal ground level, and in the shadows of tall buildings, Makati people live quiet, simple lives.

MIGUEL NACIANCENO

6:30 PM Manila Bay

I usually visit the stretch when I have the time. It was a Sunday and it was a bit crowded. I have this fascination with couples hanging out in the bay.

It’s romantic cheese but very Manila.

GERIC CRUZ

1:00 AM

B-Side, Makati Irie Sunday is a long standing reggae and dub music event that has been happening every Sunday in B-Side. he event has been going on for around ive years and has a following among rasta fans.

GERIC CRUZ

1:40 AM

Baseco, Tondo Onlookers gather on top of mounds of garbage in a dumpsite as the SOCO look for evidence in the area where an unknown man was found loating dead.

CARLO GABUCO

2:00 AM

O-Bar, Ortigas O-Bar is the only gay club of its kind in the city; all the dancers and performers are professionaly trained. I documented their performance for that night, at the request of a friend. Everything starts at midnight.

Usually natatapos umaga na.

GELOY CONCEPCION

10:30 AM

SM Aura, Taguig It was rainy, and it was a bright wall that illuminated an otherwise dreary day. he LED reminded me of Blade Runner, where in a giant, modern, commercialized city, people go about their lives, oblivious to things changing around them.

MIGUEL NACIANCENO

5:27 PM

The Gramercy Residences, Makati I saw the pool maintenance guy walk on the other end as if he was loating above water onto Makati’s skyline. It was surreal and melancholic due to the time of day and the silhouette of the guy facing a burgeoning metropolis. But it also signaled the turn to night, a signal for night-crawlers, a start of revelry for the partyphiles as others survive hardships by the fringes.

VEEJAY VILL AFRANCA

E

In a timeline where m st of her contemporaries have crashed and bur ed, riia Isabel Lopez— former Girard-Peter m del, b ty queen, and bold star—continues to reign emii nt, stealing thunder from Jaclyn Jose in ’ osa,, ning a moment in Cinemalaya best pictu a a Ordinaryo. The woman’s even going int ocu duction, and pulling all the stops for a one-w an show this month— her first. Regina Ab uaan l ects the stories of a lifetime from the b er s artest survivor.

Photograph

Jos

Pascual

O C T O B E R 2016 111

ount on Maria Isabel Lopez to make touching broken glass—bubog, to put it prosaically—sound enticing.

“I have always believed that you have to handle stained glass like you handle men,” she tells me. “If you grip too tight, you’ll cut yourself.” She holds the invisible bits of gla glass in her hands, ingers curved and elegant in a bony, aristocratic way. ay “Even f you go over them”—her hands sweep through an imaginary ry pile of tesserae, shards of smalti, and glass chips— “you have to be relaxed.” rel Still, the wounds are inevitable. “So this onewoman show h i product of many ccs of blood, extracted from me!” ard-winning actress, beauty titlist, and et (remember her stealing the thunder cast with her emerald gown?) is also an artist. he “show” she is referring to is “Body and Soul,” her irst one-woman exhibition opening this month at SM Megamall’s Art Walk. You could say it is the culmination of Lopez’s two strongest inclinations as a visual artist: 1) nudes and the female form, a recurring theme in her paintings and sketches; and 2) texture, with which she irst experimented by using marble chips, river rocks, pebbles, and sand mortar.

But discovering stained glass would open new possibilities for her, inspiring her to sign up immediately for formal lessons in Ravenna style (the Byzantine-inluenced form seen in basilicas) in the Chicago Mosaic School, followed by workshops in Berkeley under mosaic artist Rachel Rodi in 2014.

A visit to a UNESCO World Heritage site in Ravenna, Italy, in 2015 sparked the idea to mount her irst solo show—and inally conquer her fears. She is aware people look down on celebrities who take to art, but she couldn’t be bothered. Not anymore. “I’ve come to a point where I already love and approve of myself. So sige, magwa-one woman show na ako.”

Arriving at this point took many a turn and controversy—and pretty ballsy life choices. Lopez’s story does not exactly belong to the rags-toriches trope; hers is more a story of survival.

Before the allure of the spotlight, she was irst and foremost an art student. Lopez graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) with a Fine Arts degree when she was 18. Perhaps it was but a natural path for her to pursue, having been surrounded by the creative arts even as a child. At eight years old, Lopez had a non-speaking role in a production of Puccini’s opera Norma, and later in an operetta version of Hansel and Gretel.

All thanks to her mother, a UP College of Music graduate and protege of diva Jovita Fuentes, from exposing her children to ine culture. “Pero ‘di talaga ako gifted sa voice. Sabi ko nga kung may boses ako: move over, Vernie Varga!” she says, sitting at the kabisera of her dining table at the irst loor of her New Manila townhouse, knowing exactly what the rest of today’s lunch will ask of her: summarizing 54 years’ worth of her stories into an hour, maybe two, over salad, roast chicken, and laing.

It was in the visual arts where Lopez would shine. As kids, she and her siblings were given a blackboard they would divided among themselves. ““Akin yung pangatlong hati. Mamaya, solo ko na ang buongg blackboard!” she recalls. During her high school days, Lopez would gather children from the neighborhood and teach them how to sketch.

She would have wanted to be a doctor, but since they couldn’t af f rd medical school, Lopez ended up in Fine Arts, and maintained College Scholar status consistently for several semesters. Among her classmates

were Lydia Mabanta and Heber Bartolome, and among her teachers National Artist Napoleon Abueva and the likes of Jose Joya and Roberto Chabet. Joya used to single her out during sketching sessions, she recalls.

“He would come over and correct my long proportions,” Lopez says. he female anatomy has always been of great fascination for the young Maribel—several nudes done in the 80s still hang in her home today. Her drawings tended toward elongated necks, arms, and legs, more the stamp of fashion illustrations. Small wonder that her next step would be in the arena of designing clothes.

After UP, she irst worked as an assistant designer for Vicki Lopez for the Rustan’s Young VIP line. A year after, she moved to SM Shoemart where the statuesque would ind herself working alongside RTW top guns Caloy Badidoy, Bubum Melgar, Lulu TanGan, and Cesar Gaupo. “Prestigious, right?” she says coyly. “But wait—there’s more!”

To make both ends meet, the young designer Lopez had to moonlight as a sexy model by night, and play itting model by day. “I was a perfect size medium. Pag nagsasample ‘yan sila Bobby Novenario, sila Rusty Lopez, they always get me to it. When I [would] do the itting, maraming order. By night, I’d do Girard-Peter fashion shows.”

For those too young to remember, the Girard-Peter shows featured models in bikinis, patterned, says Lopez, after the cabaret revues of Moulin Rouge and Lido.

She would soon leave the P180-a-day job in SM; Girard-Peter assured her as much as P400 a night. “heir ad in the papers went: ‘he country’s most beautiful women.’ From GP came the likes of Carmi Martin, Liz Alindogan, and Tetchie Agbayani—but they only produced one beauty queen,” Lopez states proudly, pulling on the sleeves of her black boatneck blouse.

She is that beauty queen. he designer Rudy Fuentes approached her one evening and asked if she would be interested to join Binibining Pilipinas. She had hesitations in the beginning, knowing very well some of the guests that come to see her sexy modeling were regular judges at the “ ko, ‘How can I win this? I’m a sexy model! And not even a pageant. “Sabi diploma from UP will cover up that scandal in the 80s! Kainitan no’n ng Tetchie Agbayani modeling for Playboy. We have guardian of morals like Polly Cayetano. It was the Marcos era!’”

But long story short, Lopez said yes and won the Bb. Pilipinas-Universe title in 1982. When the pageant organizers found out about her GirardPeter stint, however, all hell broke loose and Lopez found her name all over the tabloids, exposed suddenly to a judging world the way she had never been. he pageant organizers almost forced her to give up the crown. But never one to quit so easily, Lopez went to the press, and fought to keep the title, eventually going on to represent the country in Lima, Peru. No wonder Stella Marquez Araneta, chair of the Binibining Pilipinas, hates her guts to this day, Lopez says.

At that time, it was almost a natural next step for a beauty titlist to join showbiz—and that is exactly how Lopez’s narrative played out. Viva f red her a movie contract, aassigning her to its glossy ensemble Films of productions. She was cast alongside Lorna Tolentino, Jay Ilagan, and Dindo Fernando in the 1983 drama Sana Bukas Pa Ang Kahapon. he year after, in the Ishmael Bernal-helmed comedy Working Girls, she held her own among a cast of luminaries as Rose, the oice receptionist driven to moonlighting as a call girl.

“Ang usapan, kapag naka-graduate ka na, puwede ka na kumerengkeng sa daan. Eh di sige.

Sige. Agree! Ang ending, eh di naging sex symbol!”

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SUPER TROUPER

Clockwise from top: all sparkledup as a Girard-Peter model; winning the Binibining Pilipinas Universe crown in 1982 with designer Rudy Fuentes who became her manager; an ad for her first solo picture which opened the Manila Film Center; with Sarsi Emanuelle in Silip; Lopez (back row, left) with her colleagues at SM, which included Bubum Melgar, Caloy Badidoy and Lulu Tan Gan; working on her plates as a Fine Arts student in U.P.

In that Bernal tribute to padded-shoulder, 80s girl power, Lopez had already exposed part of her breast onscreen (being tingled with ice cubes by a Makati exec client played by Orestes Ojeda)—but a more “bold” path was opening for her, a path she would tread with eyes open. he Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (ECP), headed by then First Daughter Imee Marcos, had just been launched, and Lopez’s Isla, her irst starring role, was the irst ilm shown at the Manila Film Center, ECP’s home.“I was packaged as a sexy actress by Viva,” Lopez says. “I was the pioneer.”

A

fter Isla came many more ofers to bare skin. Lopez plodded on.

“I told myself, this kind of work has a timeframe. You cannot be a sexy star forever. hey say being a sexy actress is like being a piece of tissue paper. You’re disposable. If you look at the track record of sexy actresses, the turnover is after one or two ilms.” Lopez’s reign over the genre lasted a decade. here are many reasons for that longevity: irst, she didn’t choose roles.

Practicality ruled over the angst of not producing “quality work.”

“Balic-Balic girl ako,” she explains, referring to an area in the gritty Sampaloc district. “Nakatira ako sa apartment na P150 ang renta, kaya I was more driven to set myself up. May fear of poverty, di ba?” he college years were tough. Art materials were expensive. “Hindi naman ako nagdodorm so I had to take public transportation,” she adds. “So my earliest weightlifting classes began on the bus from Balic-Balic to UP kasi may lunch box pa akong dala.” hat she belonged to her dad’s second of two families did not make things easy. “We only got the crumbs,” she recalls now.

Today, she is one of the bold era’s survivors. “I’ve been an actress since the 80s, but I got my irst nomination when I was already 30-plus years old, because I was focused more on the money, not the material. I was thinking how to come up with mortgage payments. When all my other contemporaries were partying and jamming, I told myself, I cannot do this.

I want to retire at 40.I was focused on making myself stable.”

In fact, while she was doing Silip—the ahead-of-its-time soft-porn oeuvre by Elwood Perez which left Lopez traumatized due to a gang rape scene she was only briefed on, well, briely—all that was on her mind was a sibling’s hospital bills. “My sister was undergoing surgery at Capitol Medical Center for slipped disc, so all the money I made there just went to that surgery.”

Second reason why she’s still here? She avoided drugs. Shabu in the mid-80s was becoming popular among the showbiz crowd, eventually destroying careers of promising talents. For Lopez, coughing up cash for drugs was a preposterous idea.

“Why will I buy?! I used to tell them, ‘It’s your privilege to jam with me and pick at my brain and have a piece of my time!’” she says now, maybe half-jokingly. “Vanity saved me. I couldn’t do [drugs], get no sleep, then have to go to taping, shooting.” hird, she was never known to be romantically linked to anyone. “You should not be identiied with any man,” she says, blurting out another of what she and her friends call “Isabelisms.” “Even if you’re in a relationship, it has to be discreet. he fans

don’t like it. hey get jealous. You always have to be reachable! Make them believe that even they have a chance with you.”

A love scene with Joseph Estrada in 1989, in the anti-US bases ilm Sa Kuko ng Agila, was supposed to be the last time she would show skin onscreen. When she shot the sequence, she was to get married the following week to the Japanese suring teacher Hiroshi Yokohama, ready to start life anew. he ilm would give her her irst supporting actress nomination, yes, but it was not to be her last time to “go bold” in a movie. At 50, she found herself exhibiting her incredibly wellmaintained igure in Brillante Mendoza’s Kinatay, in which she played a prostitute who has seen better days. hat performance earned her two Best Supporting Actress honors.

Her latest ilm, Swipe, also has her shedding her clothes. “I have a scene where I’m facing the mirror, scrutinizing my body, seeing how it’s aged.” Watching her pose for the photographer in her svelte ensemble of skinny jeans and white top, not even a painting apron could make her look dowdy, or someone approaching her senior years—although the neck and hands do give something away.

T

he woman is a class-A storyteller. Lopez recounts anecdotes and memories with a combination of sentiment and humor, pathos and irreverence, her voice rising and cresting in a dramatic cadence, and punctuates them perfectly with an unexpected punch line. Take, for example, one memorable run-in with Celso Ad Castillo, director of Isla.

“Marami akong reservations kasi I heard that Celso has to be in love with the leading lady . . . Marami akong narinig na leading lady na nagkaroon ng relationship with Celso, so talagang gwardyado ako.

Tapos pagdating ko sa island, papatikman ka ng—kasi wild ‘yon e! Wild!— talampunay. Sabi ko ‘wag na lang! Tapos nilagay nila sa tea. E nagsasunbathing ako in the nude sa balkonahe ng isang bahay kubo. I took a sip.

Nag-init mukha ko. Ay, nag-robe ako! Balik ako sa cottage. Sabi ko ayoko ‘to. Ayoko.” Talampunay, or angel’s trumpet, is a powerful hallucinogen.

Rock star Joey “Pepe” Smith—who’s likely to try anything—claims it’s the only drug he will not take.

In 1985, she told the screenwriter Ricky Lee on the set of Silip, “Ako, inaamin ko naman e, naghuhubad ako for economic reasons,” and then recounted a moment with co-star Sarsi Emmanuelle while shooting in Suba Beach, Ilocos Norte. In the ilm, wrote Lee, Lopez had to bathe naked in the batalan, withstand sand being thrown at every part of her body, “pati doon,” hold Sarsi in a naked embrace by the shore, and even put a handful of rock salt close to her most private part. All while beautifully made up and basking in the production lights. She had no idea what Elwood Perez would ask her to do next but Lopez’s reputation was that taking her clothes of was never something to fuss over. he irst day of the shoot, when Sarsi approached her, Sarsi said, “Oy, ‘day, tinanggal mo ang panty mo, e di kita na lahat dyan.”

Lopez shot back, “‘Yan nga ang binabayaran sa atin ‘day, e, ang pagtatanggal ng panty.”

Of shedding clothes for the movies, Lopez’s parents weren’t exactly against it at

One of the reasons for her longevity: she avoided drugs. “Why will I buy?! I used to tell them, ‘It’s your privilege to jam with me and pick at my brain and have a piece of my time!’”

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GLASS ACT

One of the pieces Lopez will present in her first one-woman-show this month at the Megamall’s Artwalk. She says she’s not really concerned about how her mosaics will fare; she’s always had a base of loyal collectors. What kept her from doing a solo show was fear of what people might say. “I’ve come to a point where I already love and approve of myself,” she tells Rogue.

that time, she tells me. “Ang usapan, kapag naka-graduate ka na, puwede ka na kumerengkeng sa daan. Eh di sige. Sige. Agree! Ang ending, eh di naging sex symbol!”

In the Lee interview, Lopez spoke of her mother’s sentiments to her baring her private parts for the cameras. “Nang una niyang mapanood ang Isla, siyempre worried ako. Pero wala siyang sinabi, ang sabi lang niya, iyon pala ang Isla, puro hubaran. Halos araw-araw nasa diyaryo ako noon.

Siyempre natutuwa siya, ego ng mga nanay ‘yun e. Pero after some time, nagka-argument kami. Doon lumabas lahat ang complaints niya! Sabi niya, ‘Ikaw, di mo alam, lagi kitang dinidepensa sa mga kaibigan ko!’ Sabi ko naman, ‘Mommy, ang dinidepensa, may kasalanan. Ako, wala. So Mommy,’ sabi ko, ‘you better tell your friends, your daughter is old enough to know what she wants, what she is doing, and where she is going. Memoryahin mo ‘yan ha?’” hroughout her showbiz career, Lopez continued to revert to the irst art form she learned to love. She sketched and painted, even founded he Film Artist Group which consisted of actors and actresses also into

the visual arts. She is now a member of SAMA, or the Society of American Mosaic Artists.

“I think that when a person stops growing, that’s death,” she tells me. “As long as you live, you have to continue to grow and reinvent yourself. Always move forward.” Which she has. Apart from going back to her art, she is now producing documentaries.

In the 70s, Lopez was introduced to the Inner Peace Foundation and Science of the Mind, when she used to illustrate for speakers during lectures. “It helped me a lot, developing the four gifts— vision, intuition, prophecy, and healing. I was gifted with vision; it’s more like the law of attraction,” she says. “You don’t have to put so much efort [in what you desire] because [your heart and mind] are aligned. If your mind is focused on something, it doesn’t take a lot of efort on your part to make things happen.”

More than four decades later, her one-woman show could very well be the manifestation of this gift, and of the way Lopez has lived her life thus far. his belief is evident in the works that dot her attic, a makeshift studio which is also where she keeps at least three closets full of her working wardrobe. In some of the mosaic pieces, she combined the traditional Ravenna style with modern motifs. “Body and soul—it’s like how you use your body to create, but behind it, there are forces that bring out the creativity in you.” Here and there, the viewer will see symbols like the cruciix, the yin and the yang, the Star of David, merged with the nudes. Nudity meets spirituality, set amidst the glint of a violet shard or a puzzle of gold and ochre smalti. “I’ve always been comfortable with my body, my language, my being. I don’t know if it’s because I’m an artist. But I believe the human body deserves to be gloriied.”

Her creative process likewise has a spiritual bent. “I start a piece of art with a prayer. I already have a master plan, but after the master plan, you go to the Master. You say, ‘I’m going to start this work, God, please allow the spirit to work with me.’ Bring out the best in me. hen I just low and sometimes I make mistakes, and I realize that these mistakes had to happen so that I could get certain results.”

A miscalculation here and there may cost her a few ccs of blood, yes, but nothing that this Balic-Balic girl will lose sleep over.

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BLUMENTHAL’S TIME OFF

The chef blocked of a few days from his schedule to celebrate his birthday with family and friends in Amanpulo. He might have six Michelin stars to his name but Blumenthal’s feet are firmly planted on the ground, as we observed from his easy camaraderie with the resort’s people. One will soon be his kumpadre with Blumenthal agreeing to be the godfather of a staf’s yet-to-be-born son.

Photographs by Jake Verzosa

E ION EVERYTHING

On holiday in Amanpulo, celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal talks to DEVI DE VEYRA about his career, life, and down time on an island

I was asked if I could ly out to Amanpulo early the following morning to interview British chef Heston Blumenthal.

You’d be crazy to say no. he sun was rising when photographer Jake Versoza and I settled in the comforts of our seats—the only passengers in a swank plane that smelled of leather, giddy at the thought of a three-day stay in a luxurious paradise to proile a bona ide kitchen demigod.

Heston Blumenthal is in an exclusive orbit of idolized chefs who get the kind of media attention lavished on the usual celebrities and lawed society igures. Imagine his media value: His new hairstyle headlined major British online news sites two years ago. his month, photos of Blumenthal and his French girlfriend Stephanie Gouveia nuzzling each other while walking to a restaurant were midday click bait. Hours later, news that he Fat Duck—Blumenthal’s irst eatery—regained its three Michelin stars exploded on the net. he chef ’s celebrity is hard-earned and continuously burnished with his expansive work that includes not just ine dining, but also development of institutional menus such as

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I asked if his son knows how tough it is to be a chef. “He’s lived it,” hospital, school, and airline food. He even created meals for astronauts.

Blumenthal replied. “I told Jack that if eventually he decides to join the here are books and TV shows too, and thorough investigations that business, he will have to go through the process longer and harder than revolve around his favorite subject. normal. I just want him to be happy, and he’s at that age when he can just here’s a lot of respect for the self-taught Blumenthal who is regarded try to have a go at all sorts of things. But I also told him that I’m gonna as one of the most progressive chefs around. His cookery reveals technical push him away. You gotta want it, and I know what it takes,” he continued. inesse, but Blumenthal’s menus have always been rooted in nostalgia and For most of Jack’s younger years, Blumenthal would leave their house the various emotions that it evokes. “During the Holocaust, when these early in the morning to work in the restaurant. “In a van. I remember it people didn’t have anything, it was the memories that kept them warm,” used to wake up all the neighbors,” Jack shared. I asked him what it was like Blumenthal told us when we inally met him in Amanpulo. growing up with a busy father starting to make a name for himself as a chef.

He has been to the resort a couple of times, but this particular trip is “He was away most of the time . . . best times of precious: Blumenthal was with family and my life,” he said with a laugh. friends to celebrate his 50th birthday.

It wasn’t a long interview, but Blumenthal Seated on an outdoor deck that faced the dished out a lot of his own koans. “Striving for beach, the chef talked about the tough early perfection kills creativity,” he declared, “and in a years. “I remember that was a Monday, and ‘perfection world’ you have success and failure.

I was leaving for Madrid to introduce to the And failure is considered bad. So people get world the fact that eating is a multi-sensory this fear of failure, and start pointing ingers or experience, knowing that I didn’t have the blaming others. But failure is an opportunity to money to pay my staf that Friday,” he disclosed. learn. And when you’re open to the fact that it’s he Fat Duck already had two stars and a good to fail, these are where opportunities come following, but the chef “kept putting money from. hat’s a very hard thing to teach a chef.” back in the restaurant, money for the staf, more “Question everything,” he continued, equipment . . . invest, invest, invest.”

“Question…question…question…and then hat afternoon, Blumenthal got a call you discover everything.” his wasn’t the case informing hm that he secured his third star. His during Blumenthal’s youth, though. “I wasn’t phone kept on ringing; journalists wanted to get particularly curious as a child,” he recalled, “but his reaction to the good news. now I think I am a bigger child than when I He came home at 5 a.m. after celebrating was growing up.” with a table of international chefs. Later on, He enjoys various cuisines but also believes he decided to take a call. he man on the in breaking boundaries through adventurous phone asked where his irst name came from. experimentations. It’s partly the reason Blumenthal answered that it deinitely didn’t why Blumenthal chose Australia as he Fat come from the actor, Charlton Heston. He Duck’s temporary site while the original recalled saying something like “I don’t know… location underwent renovation. “Australia, the but there’s a Heston Service, the irst motoring Philippines, Singapore—this part of the world service station. Who knows, maybe my parents is not straight-jacketed by French cuisine, that’s probably had a night out in London and went “I just want him to be why people are more open-minded and would past that station.” he next thing he knew, “A happy and he’s at that age like to try more things. Which is really the chef named after a gas station” was splashed in healthy thing to do,” Blumenthal explained. the front pages. “I spent a year apologizing to when he can try to have In the early part of his career Blumenthal my parents after that,” he said laughing. a go at all sorts of things. did everything—he manned the kitchen, the Blumenthal relishes the fact that the UK’s books, and the operational side of the business. restaurant scene has become vibrant with But I also told him that I His success allowed him to relinquish some of several outlets, other than his own, gaining will keep on pushing him the chores involved in running a restaurant so international recognition. It is certainly a matter he could devote more time to the research that of national pride. He recounted an incident that away. You gotta want it, informs his work, the part he enjoys best. “I happened years ago, during an event leading and I know what it takes.” don’t see research as work,” he said. to a G8 Summit in Scotland where French An Amanpulo junkie by now, he says he president Jacques Chirac reportedly remarked enjoys the privacy, the service, the sand, the that “Britain has the worst food in the world sea, and the people who are quick to smile. Members of Amanpulo’s staf next to Finland.” have taken a liking to their VIP guest as well. One named Bryan asked “No ofense to Finland,” Blumenthal said, “but that’s a pretty big insult.

Blumenthal if he could be godfather to his yet-to-be-born son. “I said I’d be I take ofense to that.” his was the time when London and Paris were honored,” was the chef ’s quick reply. both bidding to host the Olympic Games. Urban legend has it that the Blumenthal invited us to watch as he played ping pong with the two Finnish Olympic representatives gave their vote to London, which resort’s tennis instructor. he chef packed a mean serve and seemed very eventually won the bid to hold the 2012 Olympics. competitive and focused. “When I play ping pong, I don’t think of anything Midway through the interview, Blumenthal’s son, Jack, strode in and else,” Blumenthal admitted. He’s also gone diving nearby and enjoys the introduced himself. He is following in his father’s footsteps but wants to sunsets with his cigar and favorite drink in hand. Amanpulo has given ind his own identity. he apple, as they say, does not fall far from the tree. the chef much-needed relaxation and natural entertainment. Blumenthal he younger Blumenthal managed to conceal his real surname from his excitedly recounted a day exploring a nearby island where he came upon a schoolmates so he could be treated just like everyone else while attending rarity—a monkey too naughty even for this worldly chef. college. “He wanted to settle in as Jack, not as my son. hat was a proud moment,” Blumenthal revealed.

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FAMILIAL DUTIES

Blumenthal’s son Jack is following in his father’s footsteps. They are shown here manning the grill during a nightime barbecue by the beach. Opposite: The view from Amanpulo’s beach.

ISLAND ESCAPE

Father and son on to the resort’s floating bamboo bar. During the interview, Jack proudly showed us his The Fat Duck coat of arms tattoo.

Opposite: The allure of Amanpulo which the chef has yielded to a few times.

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THE ROGUE ARENA Promotions and relevant items, direct from our partners

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES History Con 2016 set a new standard for making education entertaining

A spectacular showcase of vintage cars, live wrestling demos, meets-and-greets with local and international celebrities (and even public talks about aliens!), History Con 2016 was a hit among history lovers of all ages. In partnership with History Asia TV, History Con 2016 was held at the World Trade Center last August. he irst two days paid homage to Philippine history. World War II reenactments, special screenings of war ilms, and educational talks from former members of the guerilla forces shed light on the sacriices and struggles of soldiers who were part of the resistance movement against the Japanese. he next two days focused on History Channel’s personalities. Giorgio Tsoukalos (Ancient Aliens), Brandi Passante and Jarrod Schulz (Storage Wars), and Damon Runyan and Ian Matthews (Gangland Undercover) gave talks and met their fans to thank them for their support. Local celebrities also drew throngs of admirers; the Heneral Luna meet-and-greet was swamped with followers eager to see the cast of the award-winning ilm in person.

Live cooking presentations, eating competitions, record-breaking attempts, and other engaging and interactive events kept those in attendance completely entertained and informed—the goal of every History Asia TV show. —Angelica Yang

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FAMOUS ROGUE “I try and be as stupid as possible regarding my progression, which means I try to look at as few design magazines as possible.”

YOU GO THROUGH the life story of architect and industrial designer Ettore Sottsass and you think, this man must have been fun at parties.

Here was a creative who grew tired of architecture’s penchant for pure functionalism; who co-founded the Memphis collective, a ragtag crew of designers formed in 1980s Italy; who espoused postmodern design with explosions of color and irregular shapes; who took a picture of every hotel room he slept with a woman in; who designed houses and showrooms and furniture while also dabbling in glassware and jewelry; who loved pop art and the Beat Generation; and who said of his days spent in a Yugoslavian concentration camp circa World War II, “here was nothing courageous or enjoyable about the ridiculous war I fought in. I learned nothing from it. It was a complete waste of time,” as if swatting away a ly.

Sure, Sottsass wasn’t unanimously loved during his time, even though his creative reach is still felt. But no one could accuse him of being boring.

IMAGE COURTESY OF GETTY

ETTORE SOTTSASS, designer