Working Group Meeting Hosts Special Guest Renan Laru-an Working Group Meeting Hosts Special Guest Renan Laru-an

The meeting began with a warm, familial moment when ‘the Cell’ took over and introduced us to their friend Renan Laru-An. The Cell members all shared the moment when they met Renan for the first time. Clara Balaguer met Renan at an event, and two months later they published a book together. Czar met Renan at a bookbinding event, Alfred Marasigan met him in print before meeting him in person, and Isola Tong did not remember meeting Renan, but was looking forward to meeting him. These personal introductions allowed the Working Group to humanise Renan’s impressive biography.

After a moment of getting to know each other, Isola shared a catchy pop song from the 1990s (YouTube), recalling how she used to think it was Indonesian, only to find out later that it was actually a Filipino song. Through this personal anecdote – showing how people in Manila can be unaware of the cultures of the Southern Philippines – we were introduced to the theme of alienation from certain regions of our own countries. This particular anecdote highlights how little we can know about certain parts of our own nations, and how popular culture can highlight the lack of awareness of one’s own national history.

Renan took us on his research journey through Southern Philippines archives. He began by exploring how working with them allows for new ways of thinking about national archives and histories. The peripheral condition of being from the South means not being impressed by current archival practices, and thus creating alternative narratives and archives. What conditions are then imprinted and impressed upon Southern archives?

Based on Annabel Teh Gallop’s research on the Qur’anic manuscripts of Mindanao, two conditions were highlighted. First, the notion of care: when you look at the manuscripts, you can see that they were cared for by local people. This provides an alternative notion to the rhetoric of custodianship, a violent practice. Secondly, the manuscripts were often associated with colonialism, even the material conditions such as the paper used, which came from China or the Netherlands; but the Qur’anic manuscripts used locally produced paper. From these points, we can see that there were artists in Mindanao who started to produce both art and a publishing practice. This shows that there are artists and art histories, and not just objects of heritage and art tradition.

When Renan shared his screen and let us into his research process, we were introduced to the work project he has been working on since 2018. He is currently rewriting the content of The Mindanao Cross newspaper headlines, rethinking them through loose, flexible and ever-changing categories. This is not a translation-based project, but a theory-based project that uses the existing archives of the newspaper to create a new archive that reclaims Southern narratives. It focuses on what the existing archives represent, but also on being close enough to them to be able to reframe, imagine and understand them.

The overwhelming amount of data in the project highlights the battlefield that is each line, the process and the difficulty of naming and labelling the categories, which is why the process remains flexible and ever-changing, broad enough to be able to include rather than exclude content. The spreadsheet creates a matrix (from the word matriz in Spanish, matris in Tagalog, the womb, the intimate nature of an organisation) that is visible in the way it holds information.

During a discussion with Clara and Renan, we thought aloud together about the need to hold information in a womb-like matrix that allows nourishing forces to find their way to what is gestating within the X and Y axes. Within these binary systems, how can we find curvatures within the linear matrix? Can turning our attention to the multiple tangent points open up readings in a hyper-linear, anti-linear way? The greater the number of data points, the greater the possibility of representing fluid life forms.

Renan’s work with The Mindanao Cross highlights the fluidity, presence and interpretability of archives. In using archives, an artist can play the role of historian, translator, curator and educator. Working with these archives becomes a gesture of alternative knowledge and counter-memory, as Renan remixes and shuffles material. By uncovering forgotten histories, we are reminded that archives are indeed something that we do, rather than something that simply exists.

As Renan made space for us to enter the intimate, intricate research process and the living, moving archive, we got to know him and become part of his world. Next time we can introduce him to you as our friend.

Renan Laru-an is a researcher based in Sultan Kudarat, the Philippines. He creates exhibitionary, public and research programmes that study 'insufficient' and 'subtracted' images or subjects at the juncture of development and integration projects. Current ongoing projects include But Ears Have No Lids (2021) and Promising Arrivals, Violent Departures (2018).

Since 2017 the Public Engagement and Artistic Formation Coordinator of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network, Renan Laru-an is co-curator of the 2nd Biennale Matter of Art 2022, Prague and has co-curated the 6th Singapore Biennale (2019), the 8th OK.Video - Indonesia Media Arts Festival (2017), and the 1st Lucban Assembly (2015). He is Curatorial Advisor to the 58th Carnegie International 2022, Pittsburgh.