The Hidden War: Re-imagining the Center

an online exhibition

produced by University of Philippines / College of Fine Arts
in cooperation with kanonmedia.com / manila-vienna 2003

curator / coordinator - UP / College of Fine Arts
fatima lasay
curator / coordinator for kanonmedia.com
alexandra reill

The Hidden War:
Re - imagining the Center
is an exhibition project on the theme of
mediated and commodified violence
showing experimental new media pieces
created by students of digital art of the
College of Fine Arts / University of the Philippines:

niko loren c. dela cruz
john paul verdera antido
gretchen flores & carmel lim
gerson r. flores
michael angelo g. lampayan
deodato m. pairez & anna cabardo
deodato m. pairez
ian a. quirante
patrick anthony d. caballa
jan virnice t. sering
jong pairez & anna cabardo
gandelyn yu
ana shariah salcedo
gerard d. baja
amos manlangit
roland tristan a. beronilla
edrick daniel
ronald remolacio
dylan jon m. ferrer

in a fact - finding and medical mission conducted in sulu,
south of the philippines, KARAPATAN exposed serious
human rights violations committed by military forces in
the arroyo administration's all - out war campaign against
terrorism.iIn the public spectacle of a government's effort
to reclaim peace and order in sulu, there is the hidden
war waged against thousands of families in the province
- the state - sponsored murder, torture, and forced
disappearances of innocent people.

Naturally the common people don't want war...But, after all,
it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is
always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it
is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a
communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they
are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the
same in every country.**

** Hermann Goering, (1893-1946) Nazi Reichsmarschall
at the Nuremberg Trials, 4/18/46, From Nuremberg Diary
( by Gustave Gilbert)

The Hidden War: Re-imagining the Center
is a cultural criticism of the spectacle in sulu, not only within
the context of militarization in sulu, but in a broader effort to
recognize and differentiate the mediatization and actualization
of violence. issues surrounding the nature and realities of
motivations for conflict and violence are explored: national
and cultural identity, sexualities and gender construction,
catholicism, us political, economic and military intervention,
ethnic and class hierarchies, and globalization.

the artists exhibiting in
The Hidden War: Re - imagining
the Center articulate their observation
and analysis of mediated and commodified
violence. the articulation comes in many forms: painting, mixed media work, installation, performance, sound and video.

in the process, the project asks for a
re - imagination, a reclamation,
of one's center as it has been displaced
in an age of spin, and likewise asks
whether art, as we have cultivated it today, has merely been cultivated as fine taste for oblivion.

For cognition, the gap between us and others
was the same as the time between our own
present and past suffering; an insurmountable
barrier. But perennial domination over nature,
medical and non-medical techniques, are made
possible only by the process of oblivion.
The loss of memory is a transcendental
condition for science. All objectification is
a forgetting.*

* Theodore Adorno, Le prix du progress

the visual vocabulary of these realities in
mass media has enabled the consuming
public to both enjoy and become oblivious
in the spectacle - such is the price and
pleasure of progress.

kanonmedia, non - profit org for new media, 12/24, richtergasse, 1070 vienna, t: ++43 - [0] - 6991 - 820 70 03