collective creativity
the space between idea and realization
is wide
our individual meanderings disclose
connections
through these patches of earth we moved
discovering a link between
a place where energies interweave
a place within that reverberate
begging the inquiries and laughing
summoning rhythm and play
shaking out the non-truths
challenging a consciuosness
we give birth to out stories.
- JCrisanto Martinez,
“CELEBR8,” Artists’ Statement,
September 1, 2006
A few photographs and verses were all I had when I started it out. The biggest chunks of data were all cerebral in the form of memories. The inspiration that started to take shape commences in early June 2011. Retyping data, collating more information, cleaning the photographs, designing, formatting and programming, creating the graphics, uploading information and constucting downloadble forms all were done in between my painting, sculpting, printmaking, writing, curating, and mounting art events. And more importantly, as my personal finances would allow.
It is October 22, 2011 today. After close to four months, there is now on cyberspace www.uekbaai.tk. The UE Kapit-Bisig Alumni Association Inc. website.
The UEKBAAI website generally contains the following pages, namely:
- About Us – this provides a general description of the Alumni Association. It gives details on the membership profile, the objectives and the programs and activities of the Alumni Association. Moreover, it defines membership in good standing and the subsequent duties of members as provided for in its Articles of Incorporation.
- News – apart from a bi-monthly editorial, this page shall contain relevant information that would benefit the membership to include among others, contemporary news, updates from the UEKBAAI, local information from the University of the East campus and the alumni organization, book/movie reviews, articles, contributions, even your favorite recipes and horoscope, etc.
- Features – is a repository of prose and poetry by members of the Alumni Association.
- Opportunites – shall contain announcements which could either be personal, commercial or classified that have prospects of benefits to either the general membership in particular or the Alumni Association in general.
- Gallery – is basically to present photographs of the undertakings of the Alumni Association. It also features a segment for old photographs and memorabilias from the past.
Basically, the website is a repository of memoirs. In time, the website hopes to expand in its magazine-format. At present, it contains avenues by which the Association may generate funds for its projects. It also has a function to come up with new members. Contributions in the form of news, literary, photographs and other related articles are encouraged. The website shall be updated every two weeks, and as the need arises..
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As a visual artist, there is that familiar fear of facing a blank canvas. But that fear dissolves into that excitement of staining the pristine whiteness with the first batch of colors until an artwork is completed.
With not much material to work with, I encountered the same sentiments while creating this website. Hesitant at first, eager the next moment, one realizes the need to get back to fundamentals. Like in painting, I must initially spawn a concept so as to be able to formulate an artist’s statement and subsequently generate the artworks. I head on for my thoughts.
That moment of thinking went deep into the night (and the other nights after that). Soon after you unravel familiar faces. Soon after you perceive the sound of familiar voices. You dig deeper and a flock of emotions swarm you as you unpack those memories. Soon after there is that inexorable eagerness to recall the experiences. Only then did I realize I already have five webpages.
Traveling in life and encountering each other again, we now realize how long it has been since then. We have aged. The urgency probably is standing up together again as we attempt to gather what treasures we have accumulated from our past encounters and pass them on both as will and testament to those who came after us and the generations to come. We were heard before. We shall be heard again.
Maybe that is the real purpose of a testament; of a will. It does not merely serve as an inventory of the things that we need to bequeath. It is to validate our lives. We tell the world that we have been there. And that this is what we have become.
So we gather our memoirs. Old photographs and anecdotes. Who do we miss and who went ahead. In as much as what has become as oppose to what will happen next. Every relevant morsel of an afterthought we carefully gather in this bin for safe-keeping. Every fragile fragment of a memory we preserve.
One time or another, we all traversed one path as we are linked together by one aspiration. We separated paths yet we met again. Today, we remain to be the few, the proud. We stick together as we age together. Arm in arm again where this remaining life will lead us. Perhaps to that direction where nobody dared to go. Like Xanadu.
Joey Martinez
22 October 2011
