Commemorating
Queerness and the Centennial Anniversary of American Conquest
This first full length performance by Otalvaro-Hormillosa
premiered at Brown University in May of 1998 as part of
her honors thesis. Later that year, she performed excerpts
at venues throughout San Francisco, including the Luggage
Store Gallery, Southern Exposure Gallery, The Forum at
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Mission Cultural
Center for Latino Art, the Elbo Room and the Justice League,
among others.
She then co-produced a reworked version at Bindlestiff
Studio with Teatro ng Tanan, a community based Filipino/Filipino-American
theater and cultural arts organization that was based
in San Francisco's SOMA district at the time. Self-directed,
researched, written, choreographed and performed by Otalvaro-Hormillosa,
"Memory and White Love" explored a fragmented
body's voyage through history and constructs relating
to race, gender and sexuality. Text, movement, percussion,
ritual and sound functioned as vehicles through which
the central transformative character attempted to reconcile
her queer, colored, gendered subjectivity in her confrontation
with the ghosts of America's colonial history of imperialist
expansion in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century.
Some characters that appeared include the Minstrel Pervert,
Mapplethorpe's "Man in Polyester Suit," the
American soldier, the native dogeater, and Shakespeare's
Caliban, to name a few. Her attempt was to challenge the
dualistic nature of societal perceptions about race, gender
and sexuality and to reveal the intersection of various
structures of oppression.
Descriptive
text for Images
[A]
"Thank Heaven for Little Girls," a tap dance
and song performed by the Minstrel Pervert (source material
from the musical, "Gigi"). Otalvaro-Hormillosa
performed various songs from this musical and utilized
video clips as visual backdrops for some segments of
the performance.
[B]
"Damn! Damn! Damn the Filipinos! Cross-eyed kakiak
ladrones! Underneath the starry flag, civilize 'em with
a krag, and return us to our beloved homes!" a
song written by U.S. soldiers during conquest, re-enacted
by a Katipunan fighter (Filipino anti-colonial resistance
soldier).
[C]
"Ambivalent Racial Fetishization," a monologue
inspired by Kobena Mercer's writings on the late Robert
Mapplethorpe's contraversial photographs of nude black
males, performed by the Man in Polyester Suit (a title
of one of the photographs).
[D]
"The Christian Savage Martyr." Every week,
a thousand boys and girls in all parts of Asia and Africa
are being driven from their parents, friends, wealth
and ambitions because they choose to follow Christ.
But you would not suspect it if you saw them, for their
faces are radiant (source material from anthropological
and religious texts written during and after conquest
of the Philippines).
[E]
+ [F] "Dancing Devil Dogeater" a dance incorporating
descriptive text about U.S. military torture strategies
performed on the Filipino resistance fighters.
[G]
"Address to the Academy," an essay by Kafka
written in the persona of an ape, describing his evolution
as a result of being captured, then "civilized"
by Europeans. This monologue is performed with the assistance
of Jorge El Curioso (Curious George), the talking monkey
puppet.
[H]
"Aguinaldo leads a sloppy life, he eats potatoes
with a knife. Once a year he takes a scrub, and leaves
the dirt inside the tub," another soldier song,
referring to a Filipino resistance leader and to the
lack of hygiene among the savages. Sung by a "clean"
savage, with accompaniment on "cajon" (a Peruvian
percussive instrument, in the shape of a box).
Photo Credits: Luisa Suta (black and white images) and
Emily
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