2002 / Multimedia installation / Artist: Claro Jarme Ramirez Jr / Bulwagang Fernando Amorsolo, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila

Claro Jarme Ramirez’s multimedia installation Deepenetration is constituted by the participation of visitors as their bodies register their presence via motion-sensing devices, which in turn set off video and sound within the darkened, intentionally foreboding setting of the gallery. The visitors’ movements play into the remaking of the site inasmuch as when they enter, they pause, adjust their momentarily impaired senses, make out what can be found on the floor and walls and then willfully proceed or retreat. The titular reference to an immersive break-in into an otherwise private or fortified zone counts on the dynamic synergies between the artwork and the visitors. They are asked to project their bodily selves into a place as they allow the spatial encounter to permeate their cognitive sensors—their eyes, ears, and skin.

Set within a white cube exhibition space where visitors are barely able to see what might confront them past their first step through the gallery doorway, the installation is intended to be mildly reminiscent of a solitary confinement cell. It consists of strategically placed sensors on the floors, a rigged projector, video camera, and insect-repelling bulbs apparently randomly strewn across the footpath of viewers. Using a circuit-bending technique, the buzzing sound emitted by the bulbs is amplified when prompted by the entry of visitors, and whenever they move across and around the gallery. Sounds, lights, and video taken of people’s gestures within the setting are projected upon the walls as the camera and projector are activated so that viewers are able to look at images of themselves in the recent past, the images coming at a few seconds time lag. Most visitors easily discover the ruse and begin to play catch-up or attempt to outwit the ominous surveillance instruments. It is in this sense that the resulting work relies upon inciting visitors to engage and manipulate the possibilities of authoring their encounter of the work.

The suggestive injunction of Deepenetration goads the viewer to immerse in the constructed environment by being part of the process of producing spatial, visual, and auditory effects that go into making up a highly sensual experience. Their level of engagement is intrinsically volitional. As the lights are activated, poetic assertions of agentive action, such as “maglibot” (loiter or move around), “himayin” (break this down into parts or decipher the logic), “assimilate” (become one or give into the taunt to belong), and “baybayin” (set upon a path), are lit and made visible on the white wall. These written charges therefore are meant to invite visitors to explore and activate the space of the installation, possibly in the midst of recognizing a discomfiting position, of being asked or made to do things. The blacked-out ambience may also be read as a challenge posed to visitors to traverse the unknown and the indeterminate experiences of art with either a healthy or circumspect curiosity about how meaning and subjectivity are effected.