Testing Third Space: Performing and Visualizing Art
by Karen Castillo
Cutting Edge Magazine
October 1999

It dawns on me once I've driven through the St. Ignatius Village entrance; I'm not going to be visiting a typical art gallery. Third Space is a house, tucked into the quiet residential neighborhood of St Ignatius Village in Quezon City. Easy to miss if you don't have an address on hand. I check: Number 14, Third Street. But the impression of the place is the kind that lingers and questions what you think art is.

Conceived January 1998, Third Space something of a "home laboratory" for the visual and performance art according to Artist in Residence, Yason Banal. It means to be a place for vanguard talents to test the artistic waters, perform and exhibit. Named after its function and the theory behind it, Third Space is a mixture of meanings. Banal explains, "It's on 3rd street, it will end on its third year. 3rd is something that disrupts the binary oppositions in thinking and implies a process. Also in queer terms, 3rd is something that opens our minds, for me art is like that."

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

The work in Third Space are usually performance, video or installation, which Banal believes are reflections of contemporary society from rave culture to using a house as an artistic space. Last summer's show held at the CCP (Cultural Center of the Philippines) toilets; simply entitled "Kaka-," is an example of the group's vanguard and uncompromising flare for the controversial. Banal shares his standards for the performance and visual arts, "I don't believe in absolute, uncontested quality now, what is good or bad, beautiful or ugly. What is interesting is what matters. What challenges you. What creates violence."

What Third Space artists aim to do is to turn the canvas on their on-lookers, as if it were glass. Here the art is as much the reaction as the object itself.

"Queenly Matter: A Post-Santacruzan Art Pageant" is the latest of Third Space's projects. This tribute to motherhood examines the play between 3 concepts: contemporary motherhood, queer beauty and radical pageantry.

A group of 13 women examined these roles by designing clothing that feigned pregnancy and then marched a la Santacruzan with their pregnant selves from Mega Mall back to Third Space. The culminating product is a video of their procession and installations of their body artworks and an understanding woman as pregnant form.

According to Mads (Maria Lourdes Adrias), a "Queenly Matter" celebrant, it was a "learning experience for me." She shares some of her feeling about the pageant, "[I was] Nervous and excited because it was my first time to do anything like that. Last minute I wanted to back out but...I just went there and had a blast."

A THIRD COMMUNITY

Any home needs a family and as I sit talking to the small group of young artists I realize that the gallery offers just that. Third Space is a place where a group of young artists, academics and professionals have created a familial bond based on interest in art and respect for the arts.

Banal and fellow artists have been both welcoming and weary as they invite people to join their community. They maintain that the quality of the community is all due to mutual respect.

WHAT'S ON THIRD SPACE

Third Space is running six alternative workshops from September 11 to October 17.On Saturdays: Children's Art from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., Conceptual Photography from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and Experimental Media from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. On Sundays: Children's Literature from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., Video from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and New Art Seminar from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The 10 rooms are available for use, they have a small though comprehensive library on film, art and design, theory and criticism. Their video lab has some 300 titles (art and foreign films) available for rent. Starting in October, 7 p.m. Saturdays are video evenings with screening and discussion.