Fyerool Darma, (featuring b*ntang786, berukera, jaleejalee, ToNewEntities, @sgmuseummemes, AIden and Lé Luhur from Autaspace), Poietics of Pantun/pantoum/tuntun/tanaga, 2021–, mixed media, dimensions variable. Courtesy Calle Wright, Manila
With disparate views of the contemporary landscape, and land erodes into at Calle Wright, Manila stands on the uncomfortable precipice
These days, any attempt to imagine humanity’s future is likely to be a depressing exercise: there is little to look forward to. The effects of climate change and political and economic crises have left human destiny at a tipping point; the impacts of the internet, social media and artificial intelligence call into question humanity’s necessary significance. This two-artist show combining the work of Singaporean Fyerool Darma and Filipino Nice Buenaventura captures this uncomfortable precipice.
and land erodes into utilises Calle Wright’s space, a two-level townhouse, to allow for intimate pockets of viewing. At the entrance, Darma’s Screenshot 11-03-2023 at 03:03 PM (philhuat 2GO) (2023) installation, featuring collaborators rawanXberdenyut, LKS, Lé Luhur, interrupts a clean white wall with a scattering of seven amorphous black stickers and six small framed digital prints featuring colourful geometric patterns, similar to those that appear in computer delays and disruptions.
A pair of video installations, one by each artist, offers a chance to contrast their works: Darma’s Poietics of Pantun/pantoum/tuntun/tanaga (2021–), featuring collaborators b*ntang786, berukera, jaleejalee, ToNewEntities, @sgmuseummemes, AIden and Lé Luhur from Autaspace on the ground level, and Buenaventura’s Rocks scattered by the last breaths of the Pacific (2023) on the first. Darma’s video plays out on a vertical HD screen, mimicking a gigantic smartphone or tablet, an effect enhanced by digital prints of blurred computer-screen composites and recreated screenshots on the wall, and an assemblage of real and epoxy resin phones to the side. Watching the videowork feels like walking into a digital realm in which multiple applications are open – reinterpretations of social-media sites Spotify, Zoom, YouTube, Google, TikTok and Facebook flash across the screen – overwhelming the viewer, as is the case in real life when spending time on a gadget. Online disruptions in the form of loading screens, advertisements and files failing to load interrupt the video itself, enhancing that real-life feel. Darma also leans into the uncanny, using robotic and artificial-looking people referencing the Malay verse form pantun and Filipino tanaga in their speech. The dreary and plastic feel of the videowork and installation appeal to the technological immersion of dreary contemporary culture.
Bringing together such disparate views of the contemporary landscape – from Darma’s digital sphere and Buenaventura’s natural world – feels awkward and disjointed on the surface. Yet both parts constitute the reality of contemporary life. The Philippines, after all, had the world’s highest social-media-usage rate per citizen, per day, back in 2021. Away from the screen it is trapped on the frontline of some of the strongest typhoons in history. If this show is anything to go by, a tempestuous future awaits
