monumentED Philippines

In September 2019, R2 monumentED embarked on a new project in the Philippines. R2 Philippines Project addresses the question of monument related to the wartime violence of the Japanese military in World War II. During the war, the Japanese military invaded the Philippines. In the final year of the war, over 100,000 civilians were killed in the Battle of Manila. The wartime atrocities by the Japanese military left lasting traces on the Filipino lives across the archipelago. Traumatic memories have intermittently burst to the surface in Philippine society, materialized often in the form of monument. Based on intensive research of wartime military violence and its long-lasting impact on society, the project demonstrates the intersection of history, memory, and present social issues in the Philippines.

By highlighting critical issues of monument, R2 Philippines Project seeks new methodological possibilities for dialogue between art and society through the practice of performative acts. For the last few years, so-called “statues of comfort women” were erected and removed again and again at various places in the Philippines. Rather than simply protesting against Japanese war crimes, these monuments in fact embody more complicated realities of sexual violence in the past and present. Responding squarely to this complexity necessitates a new mode of performance, which transcends simplistic dichotomy of victimizers/victims, male/female, and oppressors/the oppressed, yet at the same time maintaining postcolonial sensitivity to the asymmetric nature of our positionality. Through igk^s, a leap for the liberation in performative acts, we will pursue other criteria for the creation of a new linkage between art and society.