Vargas Notes 1

Project Scope

Parallel 1930 will explore speculative history based on the Vargas Museum's non-art memorabilia objects. The scope covers objects made or acquired between 1929 and 1945. Most of the output will be online and screen-based, but we may also explore tangible objects.

The Parallel Project

Parallel 1930 is a continuation of Parallel 2018, which was featured in the Manila Biennale 2018. It was a physical installation intervention. The project has several spinoffs in multiple formats. Among these are Parallel Space 2020 (a virtual world) and the video game Parallel ChronoEscape 2050.
(The Parallel project deserves a longer entry given its complexity, lore, and world-building; we will link it here in a future update of this note.)

So why are we interested in 1929–1940s?

In our initial view, 1929 marked an interesting milestone in history. The Great Depression of 1929 might have triggered US protectionism and the Tydings-McDuffie Law, setting in motion the Commonwealth Government in the Philippines. The 1929 convulsion might have also triggered the global war that culminated in 1945. Jorge Vargas himself was one of the main actors of that historical period, but we don't want to focus on him; instead, we want to rely on the artifacts to tell our version of the story.

These historical aspects won't be explored too deeply, as this is primarily an art project rather than a historical analysis, and we believe that artists can bring unique perspectives to the table.

Last year, we visited the National Museum in Cebu City. There were broken ceramics on view, but some of the missing parts were filled with epoxy so that the objects could be imagined as whole.

The areas filled with epoxy are not real historical artifacts but are a close estimation of what the form of those missing areas might have been. Our process in this project is the same but more exaggerated. We are not claiming that our project is an exact historical analysis.

Initial Research

The initial research involved visiting the memorabilia exhibition on three separate occasions. On the first visit, there was no real plan yet. During the second visit, the idea sank in that the focus on memorabilia could be interesting topic. It was after this second visit that the initial project proposal was sent to the Vargas Museum and Ms. Tessa.

On the third visit, we browsed the exhibition for interesting objects that could fit for the project. There were notable items like the Olympic medals, but those did not fall within our scope.

The next step is to ask the Vargas Museum if there are objects in their archive that fall within our scope. What might those be?

Next Step

For an initial test, we want to create a fake archival website. It would feature objects that might come from the actual collection as well as imagined/fake objects. The other forms of this project might come out naturally as the project progresses.