Mighty Ballistic
Josephine Turalba (The Philippines)
18 – 19 February 2012, 6pm
Esplanade Waterfront
Admission is Free
Josephine Turalba incorporates performance, video, sculpture and sound to explore issues of violence, migration, struggle of wealth, power and micro-identity. Her projects take a visceral approach to the politics of violence. In Mighty Ballistic, Turalba's hand-made dresses, made with thousands of bullet casings and shotgun shells, are worn in public and street performances that are documented on video. The delicately woven shotgun shells and bullet casings propose a juxtaposed visual insinuation of nostalgic tenderness and its inert violence, all the workings of personal trauma.
Relationship to Art & Faith
Turalba is in constant inquiry into human behaviour and its context, where she sometimes depicts traces and spaces, a place where empathy translates – perhaps – into healing. Faith is a ghost that Jacques Derrida considers as an “undecidable,” does not fall in any polarity of a dichotomy – it is present yet absent at the same moment. It is a lingering memory, unavailable to the senses yet experienced and suitable to sustain. Mighty Ballistic rises from the invisibility of what has disappeared – a loss and death from violence. What can be seen is no longer there. This performance is a carrier of reflection and attempts to awaken people, re-defining a people’s identity today.
It has always been a personal preference of mine to keep my defences up in life, perhaps, as a result of trauma early in life. I was never comfortable with uncertainty. When I engage in performance art, however, I allow myself to be vulnerable and participate with audience interaction. It is a channel for me to connect with people inside safe perimeters of art. Yet, how dissimilar is art from life? Lines delineating art and life have now been blurred to its barest minimum, such that I exist in a dichotomy of living my art and creating my life. Faith may mean complete trust in someone or something. Yet, does faith mean belief? Belief, be it in religion or otherwise, may bring about being positional and when necessary — violent.
The human mind is the vehicle from which action is derived. In my performance and video Mighty Ballistic, the project rises from the invisibility of what has disappeared – a loss and death from an act of violence. What can be seen is no longer there. The performance explores the conditions under which faith contributes to violence, and the potential ideological connections between faith and such violence. In the work, I attempt to pose inherent questions of the notion of “weapon” and its roles, the constituents of a bullet and its relationship to the act of violence.
Singapore is a location and a society: a society – perhaps – cleansed and devoid of the human primal aggression. A location that hosts inert aggression that lies waiting for a ghost to re-engage. Blind faith is a ghost that haunts human motives of violence. A ghost that Jacques Derrida considers as an “un-decidable”, does not fall in any polarity of a dichotomy – it is present yet absent at the same moment. It is a lingering memory, unavailable to the senses yet experienced and suitable to sustain. Art finds, investigates, questions, leaves open and makes visible, this “un-decidable” gap for audiences to make a choice, allowing the human motive to act upon it or not.
— Josephine Turalba
Mighty Ballistic re-emerges in Singapore, a performance by Josephine Turalba.
Mighty Ballistic - publicity 01 - 03: George Lara