 Hello and welcome to The Sewer's Podcast. Each episode we'll be discussing the latest in economics, politics and culture. I'm Isabel Edwards and today I'm talking to Dr Raphael Schachter, anthropologist, author and one of the curators of Motions of This Kind, which is the exhibition currently on display at the Brunnery Gallery. So Raphael, you were kind enough to give us a tour of the gallery and for such a compact space, there's loads going on in there. So could you tell me a bit about how the exhibition came about? Okay, of course. So I did my undergrad at SRS, so I'm an alumni, but I'm actually based at UCR now, just five minutes away. I did anthropology here, I'm teaching anthropology now as well, I did my PhD there. So I did a British Academy post-doc between 2014 and 2017, but during that time I was focused on contemporary art in the Philippines. And when I was out there having done previous curating throughout all my projects, I applied to the Brunnery Gallery to a regular open call for the exhibitions. And thankfully they said yes, and at that point I spoke to two of my key interlocutors in the Philippines, two curators and artists, Rene and Larry O'Ran, and Merva Spina who agreed to curate the project together. So it was a long time coming, this was three years ago when we were accepted through the project. But it really acts in two ways, one as a way of exploring contemporary art in the Philippines today, to a very particular kind of concept of the lateness. But also it's actually a research methodology for me. So as someone who's still doing research on this area, the exhibition in fact lets me both deepen the relationship with the people I'm working with, artists, curators, directors, fabricators, gallerists, etc. from the whole ecology of the art world. But it also then lets me explore a particular idea collaboratively with my informants, interlocutors, friends. So really there's a multiple different aspects of the exhibition on the surface and it's also at a more meta-level. So I think when I went in on StratWee first is the variety of media that you've got as part of the exhibition. So we've got the snow-white part that's very visual and also that's the first thing you hear when you go in is this kind of like high-pitched giggling. But then we've got things like embroidery and all of this. So maybe you could give us a bit more detail about some of the exhibits. Yeah, of course. I think in choosing the artist, so between the three of us as curators, we firstly had a long list of artists we wanted to work with who could address the theme, thinking about temporality, thinking about the relationships between the UK, the Philippines and Brunei. But also we wanted to work broadly with our generation of artists. There were lots of fantastic artists in the Philippines but we wanted to keep it to this generation. Of course we had a 50-50 split of female and male artists. But then also to think about not only artists who could relate to this theme of belatedness but also who could show different aspects of different types of mediums and different kinds of works. So yeah, exactly as you said, Sian Dairit's work is a large-scale embroidered map made both in the Philippines and in the UK. So designed by Sian but then embroidered in the Philippines by a local embroiderer and then the UK by hand and lock with the oldest embroiderers in the royal family and royal military. It was not about the prestige you're working with them but actually a way of weaving empire within the textile itself. We've also got, as you said, video works at Iter Hoxton's work on Snow White and this idea of kind of performed happiness, this idea of labour in particularly in Hong Kong Disneyland where a lot of the choreographers and performers from the Philippines end up, once they hit this underclass ceiling. And the Philippines end up performing as background dancers, as candelabras, as monkeys within Disneyland Hong Kong. Then we've got huge video pieces from Yes on the Now in the basement and also the 11 projectors within Michelle Dizon's work Printage Analog Projectors. We've got another video kind of essay by Lisa May David and Gabrielle Wostel-Saint-Yen. And we've got Huge Mural by Amy Lee and an End to Come Actress. So really it is a huge variety of different kinds of works, very few paintings, mostly kind of installations, but really kind of trying to see as many different aspects as possible, rather than reducing it to kind of one kind of form. So it's not a painting show. Yeah. And it's actually, it's very interactive as well, isn't it? There's the colouring station where you can sit and colour in your labourings so wide. And also all these sort of immersive pieces where you're sort of in the middle of it, which I think as someone experiencing it makes it much more interesting. Yeah. And as well, I think what's important as well is that all the projects, you know, they're aesthetic works, they're artworks, but every single one are also kind of long-term research projects. So each of them are, each of the artists, there's 11 artists, nine bodies of work, two of them are pairs, but each of them are really invested in very long-term research practices, investigating different aspects of, you know, empire, colonialism, labour, spectacular, the state, lots of different aspects of both kind of Filipino, wider, worldwide kind of contemporary and historical information, which they are interweaving within their works itself. So these are long-term research projects, which then this exhibition acts as kind of a fulcrum within that long-term work. And it's interesting because it is, like you say, all the artists involved are, they're either working in or from the Philippines. But there is quite a lot of SOAS in it as well. It's almost like it's local and then it's very outward-looking. So like the, you'll have to remind me about the exhibition with the security cameras that had to be from SOAS. It'd be interesting to hear a bit more about that. It was important throughout the exhibition that, you know, the fact that we were at SOAS was important. You know, that was actually the very first thing we said as a kind of trio of curators when we said, okay, what are we doing? One of the first things we said was, why SOAS? Why did we not? How does it make sense to simply chuck 11 artists, as you said, working in or on the Philippines into SOAS and see what happens? So in many ways we try to kind of really relate to that history. So firstly, think about SOAS as, you know, the school where the empire was run out of, the school where, you know, colonial officers were actually trained to go out into the world, two places such as the Philippines. So, Efor Balpal, who was a Welsh political scientist who did, you know, years and years of research in the Philippines, got his kind of official accreditation to go there from SOAS. So then luckily he left, he bequeathed all his 150 boxes of data on the Philippines to the SOAS archive, which about three or four of our artists really invested in within the project. So we not only have an archival, kind of classical archival display curated by Dr. Cristina Juan, who's the head of the Philippine studies here at SOAS, but also we utilise that research both physically and some of the installations, but also in terms of the data that went into the works. So that fact of like being at SOAS was crucial. And as you say, Yasson's work, which incorporated a range of surveillance and CCD cameras, it was crucial that they were from SOAS. So along with his projectors, which we also utilise, which was crucial, which were also from SOAS, what he was interested in is what has either gone through those projectors, so all the information data that's been siphoned through those projectors into SOAS. And the same way within the surveillance cameras, what they have seen as institutional artefacts of kind of capture. So it was very important to him and our artists and to us that the site-specific nature of where the exhibition was taken place was key. We weren't, we're not in a vacuum. It's not a white cube. It's a space with a very particular institutional history. So the exhibition is on until the 22nd of June, isn't it? And then the research projects will presumably continue. Yeah, absolutely. So we had a conference here at SOAS on the day after the exhibition. So we're currently putting that into a book, which is really important. So the legacy of the project, the way it kind of continues on, the fact that it doesn't just stop now is crucial. So yeah, so the book is the first thing, which we're already working on. And then we're planning on moving the exhibition back to the Philippines. So not simply, you know, we're producing it there piece by piece, but working with all the artists to do a kind of new iteration in Manila. So actually going there in November to start working on that and discussing that with people. And we're also hoping to work with the British Council, who are also very helpful in the exhibition, to actually take artworks from their collection. They have an incredible collection of works collected over the last 100 years. So they've offered for us to take pieces of that from their collection. Each of our artists to choose a piece, which will then take back the Philippines and then they'll produce new works, kind of playing with those works or playing off those works, which again kind of reverses the flow. Normally it's, you know, booty from, you know, far off the island. And we're going to be kind of returning with the works as well. And also not simply utilising it as kind of an embassy show, which you often see in kind of these, quote-unquote, peripheral locations. But actually trying to kind of think about again the relationship between these works. What are these works? How can they kind of be related to what's happening in the Philippines in Manila today? Yeah, and I mean, if you're listening and you haven't already been to the exhibition, I'd really recommend you go and checking it out. It's only there for a little while longer. But if it's too late, hopefully that's given you a flavour of what it was and you can catch up later with the book and follow it. Follow it's progress from there. So, Raphael, thanks so much for joining us. The Rebels will stop tour of the exhibition. And thank you for listening. If you'd like to hear more, you can head over to the Sewers blog or visit our website.