Date 20.06.2023
Time 20-21
Place Teatro 1 @ Mattatoio, Roma
Il mio filippino (trans. my Filipino) is a multimedia performance based on a research that has engaged the artist for several years, on the basis of an astonishing documentation of the routine of 'care and cleaning gestures' by Filipino domestic workers. It is meant to be an invitation to rethink and reflect on the questions: how to be equal and recognise the invisibility of others? Who are these people who clean the world?
The intention of Dela Cruz's work is to reconcile the exhausted bodies of these precious domestic helpers with the earth and the soil through rituals and knowledge of the indigenous Filipinos, asking the question: how do we eliminate the illusions of love towards the employer's house, which prevent society from seeing the real condition of these people?
In the pre-colonial Philippines, the care of spaces has always been associated with the way people relate to nature. Care is the central form of coexistence with the visible and invisible elements in the environment. In the course of the long period of Spanish colonisation, the slave trade across the Pacific, the American and Japanese occupation, and dictatorship, caring finds a new definition, as does the body, and its gestures and movements. The expression 'my Filipino' was coined in the mid-1980s following the influx of Filipinos to Italy in the 1970s. Italy has become the place with the most significant Filipino diaspora in the European Union. This labour force is and feels invisible. This project is not meant to trigger a sense of guilt, it is rather an invitation to look closely and perceive the exhausted bodies and invisible and neglected movements. Quoting Françoise Vergès: 'While we try to clean/sanitise the wounds of the past, we must also clean/sanitise the wounds that are inflicted today... While we heal the past we must simultaneously heal the present damage that increases the exposure to death of millions of people in the global south. The past is our present and it is in this uncertain temporality that the future can be imagined'.
direction, concept, research and choreography
Liryc Dela Cruz
performers
Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr, Sheryl Palbacal Aluan and Jenny Guno Llanto
in collaboration with
Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr, Flora Ventura, Sheryl Palbacal Aluan, Jenny Guno Llanto, Tess Magallanes, Daisy Magallanes, Jessica Duque
with
Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr, Flora Ventura, Sheryl Palbacal Aluan, Jenny Guno Llanto, Tess Magallanes, Daisy Magallanes, Jessica Duque
length: 45’
Liryc Dela Cruz (1992) is an artist and filmmaker from Tupi, South Cotabato in Mindanao, Philippines and now based in Rome. His works were selected and screened in different international film festivals and art events . His debut short film The Ebb of Forgetting premiered at the 68th Locarno Film Festival.
Cruz's films are thematically related to his origins, history, and personal psychology. Their work outside cinema focuses on care, indigenous practices, decolonial practices, post-colonial Philippines, transpacific slave trade and hospitality. Dela Cruz was one of the key collaborators of Philippine independent master filmmaker Lav Diaz. He is also considered as one of the representatives of the slow cinema movement (Ji.hlava IDFF ‘18).
In 2020, he was selected as one of the young emerging filmmakers of Berlinale Talents during the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. Dela Cruz was also mentored by French Political Scientist and Activist, Françoise Vergès during the Mediterranean Ecofeminist Decolonial Union for Self-Education in Lecce, Italy.
Il mio filippino debuted in 2021 at the Teatro di Roma - Teatro Nazionale in Rome as part of his ongoing research project “Il Mio Filippino/a,” a flagship project in continuous development with Filipino cleaning and care workers. The same project was also a recipient of Artissima - Torino Social Impact Art Award for the year 2020 and by Mattatoio di Roma for its Prender-si Cura residency programme in 2022.
In 2023, Dela Cruz presented his research Eternal Care & Hospitality: Tools for the Revolution as an artist mentor at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy. Recently, he has been selected as one of the artists of Santarcangelo Festival for the IN EX(ILE) LAB 2023-2024. He also recently premiered his new research performance “Kay Kami Mga Mananap (Because We Are Beasts)” in Udine Far East Film Festival, a reimagination of the artist on the pre-colonial concept of intimacy and eroticism in pre-colonial Philippines.