Staking Memory and Place: Claims on Space and Meaning in the Default Neighborhoods of a Mid-Lifer Museum

Abstract

The essay looks into how countermapping was explored as both research and artistic strategy by the art collective called Plataporma as they were invited to engage with the Lopez Memorial Museum and Library’s 50th anniversary exhibition in 2010. Their project remains accessible as hyperextensions, a blog they crafted in response to the curatorial prompt to work with the institutional archive and to look past the museum's walls, beyond its mere location (thus the harking back to Pasay from Pasig). In the process, Plataporma helped surface at least traces of what we curators would call 'civilian'/non-artworld perspectives of the workings of an institution that positions itself within the frame of public service. Documentation of the project may be found on http://hyperextensions.blogspot.com/p/project.html.