Melva Rodriguez Java
Landmarks as cliches
Tucked away in an old section of the city is a twelve-meter high sculpture done by accomplished master Eduardo Castrillo. The work depicts in cold metal the countenances of Cebuanos who have contributed significantly to the building of Cebuano society.
Less than a kilometer away, a recently-renovated plaza, the size of a postage stamp sits amidst a cluster of concrete structures at the tip of a traffic junction.
Another park fronting the City Hall is presently undergoing renovation, and soon, the one beside the old fort will likewise get a facelift.
These projects are components of the city's campaign to revive decaying portions of the urban core which, if left unattended, will fester and breed crime and other social ills.
These sculpted, landscaped landmarks would be veritable oases in the jumble and maze of urban frenzy.
They would slow down and revitalize our senses dulled by daily urban sights and sounds. Castrillo's masterpiece would cast forth its retrospective comment about the historic Sugbuanon (Cebuano), while soliciting our senses with the glow and glitter in the metallic likenesses of local heroes.
A couple of blocks away, cobbled pathways, stone steps and terraces would lure us into the hidden surprise behind shrubs, hedges and corners of Plaza Hamabar, Rizal Plaza of Independencia.
For a few moments, the headiness of daily preoccupations would be bracketed, our equilibrium restored and our senses soothed by the charms of sympathetic surroundings.
Then why don't they?
Why is it that when we pass by these projects we get the feeling that they are not for us? We drive past the Pari-an sculpture and have to crane our necks for a fleeting glimpse of personages who have made a difference in our history.
Proceeding down the road we hardly notice the tiny plaza dedicated to a legendary native chieftain, hemmed in as it is by bulky buildings and busy streets.
The signal we get is that these spots are to be taken in only in a hurry, from inside cruising jeepneys or from tourist coasters en route to other destinations. And that they are to be viewed only with half a mind, from the periphery of our vision.
But architecture as cityscape is the most public of all arts. It is meant to be an encompassing public event. As one architect described the experience: "you can be a distance away, a block away from a house on a hill somewhere, and you can look at that dsitant thing as an object wherever your perspective is. You approach, you move towards it, the object is upon you, there is a moment -- when you cross a threshold and you're no longer outside the object, you are in it."
Public projects are for everyone, for Cebuanos, first and foremost. A public work of art is to be a lived experience, opening up an inner world of ourselves, to ourselves. But they have to be allowed space and time for their proper presenting.
In our parks, as well as in our sculptures, and in our buildings, the empty spaces are as eloquent as the masses, the volumes as sensuous as the void. We must allow the transparency that come from the play of light and shadow to excite our senses. The open space around an artistic creation will beckon to us and bid us to explore and contemplate its beauty, as we walk in and around and inside the art piece.
The open space will allow the work to leap forth and cast its poetry, with the earth as ground beneath it, behind it, flanking it, bearing it.
To withold space and time from our urban art forms is to impoverish our daily existence.
To proceed in our customary haste is to remain in the periphery of an inner world as spectator rather than as participant.
It is also to relegate our art forms and "urban renewal" schemes to mere cliches.
Dec. 29, 1997
* Other articles by the author in this website.