Standing,       Mo         vi   n   g,   Standing

In online meme-speak, Harambe, the gorilla that was killed when a boy fell in his enclosure in 2016, became an ominous tragicomic figure, foreshadowing the predicaments that would befall the world in the coming years. A narrative that was perpetuated by the young, tech savvy/dependent generation that has grown callous with dark and sarcastic humor to cope with inheriting a dying world. The gist is that the tragedies, catastrophes and other disasters, man-made or otherwise, are repercussions for the killing of an innocent gorilla. As absurd as it is, it can be taken as a symbolism of the man versus nature trope and ultimately, upon deeper introspection, it inevitably unfolds as a man against man conflict where the succession of events, whether illogical at a given perspective, arrives at a conclusion that is unfavorable to our species and nature itself would still be indifferent to our misfortune.

A cause and effect. A sequence of events stemming from a prime cause leading to a multitude of possible outcomes. A dance. Much like these set of movements, shown as a symbolic rendering of Jobert Cruz, which tells of the pining and the search, the courtship that entails and the realization that this ideation is, or might be an unattainable mirage that quickly turns to dust at the moment we thought that we have it within grasp. And yet we continue with the steps. We advance the motion, whether it is minimal or it goes in leaps and bounds, sinuous and slick or rugged and angular. The purpose might be to arrive at the end of the dance but it can also be a means of being. To feel and to be alive with the movement even if at the end we have to extricate ourselves from the figure of attachment that we have adhered to. The dance partner so to speak. It is in this regard that Cruz’s works finds itself in parallel to that concept of man against itself.

Mikko Baladjay’s works on the other hand seems like an overview of the entirety. The observation of each individual sequence through several screens suggesting personal and collective truths simultaneously occuring but comes to us on a unique light depending on where we are standing and the manner in which we are looking. The recurring process that leads to the culmination of each sequence and/or yields the final output that is either rebirth or disintegration. In a way, it is Baladjay’s take on the idea of comparing the formation of universes to bubbles in a boiling pot; Innumerable, instant and quickly dissipates. It is a garden of forking paths opening and closing to an infinite number of possibilities depending on the steps that are taken or the progression of twists and turns that are threaded either by impulse or by calculated motion. His works therefore, follows the narrative of man’s contest against nature. A Sysiphusian endeavor considering that we are nothing more but infinitesimal windows in the greater scheme of vast shifting.

These works by Cruz and Baladjay are the momentary deviation from what seems as a standstill. A ripple in a great body of water that might appear as calm but is actually churning violently across an imperceptible expanse of time and space. A sudden jerking movement of thought to liberate ourselves from the yokes of imagined deities and rituals, the blood soaked despots  standing on their green manicured lawns mocking our efforts and histories of struggle with duplicitous sloganeering, the ravages of a global disease and the crossroads of annihilation from, once again, an imminent world war, to at last come out into the sun and declare to ourselves that we are still alive.

-NR