Untitled (2022)
Cocoy Lumbao
Selected by Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila

Using found footage from a 1994 video recording of his parents, Cocoy Lumbao explores how technology shapes the way humans interact and connect with each other. Intended as a love letter to their children back in the Philippines, the couple’s video message combines everyday parental advice with the delight of testing out “new technology”, in this case, a new portable video camera.

Joselina Cruz, Director/Curator, MCAD Manila, says:

The film delves into our complex relationship with technology, as seen through the lens of a video recording from the 1990s. Intended as a video ”letter” to their children back in the Philippines, the couple’s video message combines everyday parental advice with the playful testing of a portable video camera. Here nostalgia belies deeper issues surfaced by the work, including the social impact of migration on families, as well as the behavioural shifts caused by our dependence on gadgets and technology.

The artist uses nostalgia and memory as a form of a dream state, where the past enables us to reframe the present and future. Lumbao slows down the film, mutes their voices, relying instead on subtitles, and the tension of a fictive dialogue wrestles with the desire for the text to be real. Viewing footage from 30 years ago gives us the distance to recognise how the rapid advancement of technology has dictated how we interact with each other as well as how most contemporary human interaction and communication mediated across social media, entertainment channels, and other contemporary communication platforms.

As part of the AFI Program, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design is able to support the works of local artists working with the moving image, and share these modes of locality with a global audience.

Artist Q&A

What does a democratic, international film programme such as Artists’ Film International, mean to you as an artist?
As someone who leads in organizing informal screening platforms, democratic film programs have the capacity to pave the way for inclusivity not only in terms of nationality or region but also in form and method of production—to be able to digress from the mainstream-capitalist big studio and to focus on singular, autonomous voices and content.

What compels you to work with moving image, and when did you first become interested in this medium?
I consider myself a visual artist who is not endowed with skills like painting and drawing. Videomaking and other lens-based media made a lot of sense for expressing ideas visually, I became first interested in the medium when I was in college studying under the film program of the university and got disillusioned with the direction of the course towards industry-oriented outputs: like the big studios and glossy cinema and illusionistic narratives.

Can you speak about the potential that dreaming and altered states of reality offer individuals and societies? How do you feel this is reflected in filmmaking and in your artwork specifically?
Dreaming has always the potential to show the ‘other’ or the ‘other than this’ scenario. Which can also translate loosely to ‘criticality’ or in being critical against the status quo. One can go as far as to say ‘Dreaming’ is a form of critique. In my artworks, the dreaming state moves towards a ‘nostalgic state,’ to find sense in the present, and to open critical ideas about the present.

Please share a list of books, music, films, artworks, thinkers, spaces, and places that inspire your practice, and in particular have fed into your thinking about this film.
Most influential to me are the writings of the critic Walter Benjamin—reflected in his two books, ‘Illuminations’ and ‘Reflections,’ where essays about art, authorship, and culture are included. The film that changed my view into art and image-making was Michael Snow’s 1967 film called ‘Wavelength,’ which was a long-single slow zooming take set inside a room.

What new projects or lines of research are currently preoccupying you?
My constant preoccupation in terms of research has always been about ‘video art’ and their inherent properties that separate them from film, cinema, and other moving image media. I also try to locate critical points where the notions of decolonization and nationalism are possible to be reflected against local video art practices and other attempts in using video by artists in the field of Fine Arts and visual arts.