Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila: The Extra Extra Ordinary

The Extra Extra Ordinary presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) in partnership with the Taipei Contemporary Art Center (TCAC), curated by Joselina Cruz and Esther Lu, is an extra ordinary work of art that I have never seen before. At a first glace, it is a mystery that will make you think what kind of concept it is—mind-boggling and interesting.

The printer and lights for example, is puzzling and brought curiosity to all of us. The printers set on a wall and at the other side, you'll see different kinds of lamp that are blinking from one set to another and I was wondering why these lights are not simultaneous, like it's following a pattern.

The printer and lights is a computer language and that's what makes them trigger the lights. They built a software to filter certain hashtags in Twitter. It prints a software into the space that collect future data based on specific hashtag that they set. Once it's working,the set the hashtag (ex: kinship). Every time the software is activated, the software will go to the Twiiter databank and collect all the people's tweets (#kinship). The software will break it into a binary code, then transfer the binary code into the blinking lights. What we experience here is the somebody's usage. #Kinship was chosen for the project for 24 hours and can be manipulated into any word. 

Everyone who use the chosen hashtag will be collected, the complete sentence, but you don't see the persons who tweeted, you only see the tags. There is a 7 day delay when there are so many tweetes, but if there's few it can be in real time like about 2 minutes waiting only for printing.

The Extra Extra Ordinary proposes a new sensory processor to attend out contemporary everyday life with add-on movements and sensitivities. The title suggests an abstraction of affects shared among the human and the non-human; their correlation and disjoints as informed by contemporary objects, technology and culture. It goes exterior and interior, like how our culture involves and how our city involves altogether. 

The growing tension to unlearn ethics between human and non-human worlds is one of the burning issues of our time. We question the world we've inherited in the face of accumulated ecological catastrophes, of wars and the continuously increasing debts that are passed on to the coming generations. The Extra Extra Ordinary shares such concerns specific to our modern material conditions, and seeks to offer an alternative space time for us to exercise and explore how we can relate ourselves among things seen and unseen. 

By creating a simulation of such a worldling process with works presented by artists. The Extra Extra Ordinary conceives many unparalleled sensibilities to operate the essence of life in detail, inter exchanges and connections among matter, energy and life. 

The show is generously supported by Edouard Malingue Gallery and the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF). The exhibit is from September 20 to November 18, 2018 at the G/F De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB), School of Design and Arts (SDA) Building, Domingo St., Malate, Manila. Open from Tuesday to Saturday, 10am-6pm and Sunday10am-2pm.

ARTISTS

Chou Yu-Cheng (b. 1976 - Taipei) lives and works in Taipei. He works across a wide range of media including installations, sculpture, digital media, painting.

Gary Ross Pastrana (b. 1977 - Philippines) lives and works in Manila, Philippines. Pastrana explores the wholeness of thing-ness of an object through the process of dismantling and re-working of parts.

Tromarama (Indonesia) is an artist's collective founded in 2006 by Ferbie Babyrose 9b. 1985), Herbert Hans (b. 1984) and Ruddy Hatumena (b. 1984). "Tramorama" refers to the trauma of the labor-intensive work they did for the music video for the Indonesian rock band Seringai.

CO-CURATOR

Esther Lu is a curator and writer currently based in Paris and Taipei. Lu worked as the director of Taipei Contemporary Art Center from 2015 to 2017, embarking on a series of institutional transformation to shape discursive dialogues among production forms, program contents and the space.