Dominga Street, Dominga Street

In the early afternoon it took quite a time for an intrepid friend and me to hunt down and capture a taxi near my apartment building. There are certain periods in the day when none can be found on the roads, and this was one of them. The first one we ensnared was let go after the driver screwed up his face and repeated blankly the address I had given him, “Dominga Street? Dominga Street?” several times. He would struggle to deliver us to our destination I decided, and made my friend get out of the taxi. She did so quite good-naturedly even though she is an ex-Manhattanite who will happily ride in any taxi no matter what.

One reason I often walk within my Makati City neighbourhood is that dealing with taxi drivers is a trial for me that I bear poorly (just ask my friend!). Being lost stresses me out probably more than anything else does in life. In recent years, I have learned to forearm myself with maps before embarking to a new place and I do feel confident that I will always find wherever we are going but navigating the irregular maze of streets in Manila makes me nervous and the language barrier makes communication problematic; and when I with my English-teaching background cannot make myself understood, I get my knickers in a total twist. It is neither logical nor pretty but there it is.

My strategy is to cut my losses and move on immediately if they have trouble understanding me or they do not recognize the location I have requested to be taken. I prefer to spend a little longer locating a more experienced driver than to spend time at the other end frantically searching for the unknown. In this case, the next taxi driver who stopped evinced enough recognition when I mentioned the name of the area we were headed, for me to believe he was a sufficiently safe bet.

Thus, for the second time we hopped into a taxi and set off towards Malate. We were on our way to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), which is located within the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde’s School of Design and Art (SDA) (if you are also curious to know why a Filipino school might be named after a French saint who died in 1862 see link). Distance-wise at less than four kilometres from our starting point, MCAD was relatively nearby but I could feel a distinct shift in mood once we were out of our Makati business district and within its perimeters. Traffic was heavy around the school, we hit a one-way road that led to an alternative route that added an extra ten minutes, and our driver wanted to off-load us quickly. He kept saying, “This is De La Salle” and I kept repeating back, “Dominga Street. Dominga Street”. Not my finest hour, but at least I will never forget the address of this particular museum.

And I will also remember it because the narrow entrance to the museum on Dominga Street hides the shape and form of the building. Until you are deep inside the exhibition areas and you have turned around a few times, it is difficult to appreciate just how extremely huge and extremely white the gallery space is with its very high ceilings. We were there to view works by visiting Filipino-American artist Paul Pfeiffer, and were initially rather disorientated and confused and could not make sense of what was in front of us. We walked through the gallery and wondered where the exhibits were. Fortunately, we were joined by one of the museum staff who kindly provided us with some background and a very handy pamphlet which detailed the exhibits. Then I started to “see” things differently, such as the fact that the projector on the far wall and the screen that we had just walked past were themselves in fact art objects.

While writing this post I went to the museum’s home page (see link) where it states, “designed by local architect Ed Calma [see this article about his famous architect father and himself link] this space is the only one in the Philippines that approximates an international contemporary art museum and gallery.” From here I checked out the local architect’s homepage and was interested to discover that his team was responsible for the Philippine Pavilion at the 2005 Expo in Kasugai, Aichi, Japan. We visited an old friend of ours who kindly took us to the expo. I am pretty sure we visited the pavilion briefly.  Its coconut design theme won recognition that year, and the neck massages given to visitors were very popular. 

Back to 2015, my favourite display on this Thursday afternoon was “24 Landscapes”, the series of photographs shown above of Santa Monica beach. Looking at them they look ordinary, albeit a little grainy. The pamphlet explains that the original prints were some of the last taken of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 and the artist has, “turn[ed] a typical Hollywood portrait into typical landscape. The loss is therefore not simply that of the central image, but our ability to instantly recognize and assign meaning.” My friend seemed to like the “Morning After the Deluge” shown below where a half of a sunset and of a sunrise were filmed and put together to make one image. Both of these exhibits were seen to their best advantage on the wide expanses of wall.

The title piece of the show, “Vitruvian Figure” was a complex structure designed by Pfeiffer but assembled under his direction. Joining so many small components together must have been a massive undertaking and would have required a team of workers. Perhaps he should have been named as “architect” instead? This contemporary art pushes the definition of art in provocative ways that I do not understand. I figure sometimes it is enough to just go and look at new forms and not worry about any rhyme or reason.

Going home it took patience to coax one of the more elusive species of taxi, the “empty-taxi” to come close and allow itself to be boarded. But one eventually accepted our challenge. Life in the wild of Manila is unpredictably replete with colourfully crossed wires and detours. Exploring it requires strength and courage. After every time I think to myself, I am pleased to be going back now to my orderly and quiet apartment. I am content to stay home, at least I think I am for awhile, but that is only until the next curiosity catches my eye and entices me out of my safety zone again.

Thank goodness for friends who say, sure Jodi, I’ll join you.  xxx