Talk & Discussion: Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien with Antares Bartolome, Lisa Ito-Tapang, Donna Miranda, and Angelo Suarez

Artists Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien have organised an evening of presentations and discussions with labour and land activists from the Philippines, with the intention of highlighting struggles in the country and building connections with activists in Scotland. These talks will elucidate the strategies and achievements of organisations such as CAP (Concerned Artists of the Philippines), SAKA (an anti-feudal alliance of art and cultural workers that support and advance the peasant agenda of genuine agrarian reform, rural development, and food security), and UMA (National Federation of Agricultural Workers Union), with a focus on the role of culture within a larger mass movement. Participants include Antares Bartolome, Lisa Ito-Tapang, Donna Miranda and Angelo Suarez.

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien are artists and writers from the Philippines and the US, respectively. Together, they have a collaborative artistic practice that moves from the Philippines outwards to other places, addressing localised iterations of labour and capital from the perspective of imperialist damage.

Lisa Ito-Tapang is a cultural worker, writer, and independent curator based in Manila. She is a member of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP), an organisation of progressive artists and cultural workers founded in 1983 as a response to censorship during the Marcos dictatorship. Since 2012, she has taught art history and art theory as a faculty member of the Department of Theory, University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. Her research, creative, and curatorial interests explore intersections between art practice, socio-political engagement, and ecology.

Antares Gomez Bartolome is a curator, artist, and writer based in Quezon City. He studied art history way back when and has taught courses in visual studies, materials, art history, and theory. He enjoys reading about sociology, geography, and food. His practice focuses on organization, redistribution, and collective work. His recent projects include producing the album of the blues band The General Strike and the publication of ‘A Draft Manual for Collective Work’ as part of Jonas Staal’s Training for the Future (Sternberg Press, 2022) which distils the experiences of cultural workers in effigy production into a guide for collective artistic practice. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) and co-runs Masukal Bistro, an experiment in sustainability, collective learning, and small enterprise management.

Angelo V. Suarez is a poet who explores conceptualism and performance in his art practice. His last book was Philippine English: A novel published as a downloadable PDF in 2015. He volunteers for Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA, Federation of Agricultural Workers) and makes his living as an advertising copywriter.

Donna Miranda is a choreographer living and working in the Philippines. Miranda relocates choreography from the site of the individual body to that of collective political actions. She makes a living as a development worker in public health. She also does volunteer work for the Federation of Agricultural Workers in the Philippines (UMA).