SHERWIN RIO

My father found a bird's nest,
In a black plastic pot,
Four little birds in a tangle of grass and twigs,
Pressure-treated wood and a roll of rough paper towels,
Near brimming tins and gray vinyl siding,
A little bit of radio,
Chatters in some distance.

My father found a bird's nest,
In a SkyFlakes box,
Perched on the shelf,
Of a semi-outdoor workbench,
Made with found nails from a five-dollar bucket,
And the softly-splintered grains,
of salvaged sun-soaked wood.

My father found work,
Between coiled dirty-bright bands,
WD-40,
And gasoline cans,
Electrical cords wrapped,
'Round some booming syllabic cadence;
Static and erratic;
Impatiently chirping,
From repurposed five-gallon buckets,
Upended milk-crates,
Some plastic jug containers,
Shirts drying over fans.

.......

My mother once told me:
That a wind can reconfigure,
That a line of birds was ancient,
That a line of birds was gifted,
That a line of birds was a message,
That a line of birds was god,
That a line of birds was sacred,
That a line of birds was Lola Mama,
That a line of birds was Lolo Papa,
That a line of birds was a dream.

What if we could reconfigure,
And make a line a square,
And make a line a circle,
And make a line a letter,
And make a line go by,
And make a line a shade,
And make a line the sky,
And make a line a game,
And make a line a box,
And make a line a nest?

What if we could reconfigure?

May pugad ng ibon natagpuan ang aking ama
Sa loob ng itim na plastik na paso
Nakakimkim ang apat na inakay sa pagitan ng
mga tangkay at damo,
Katabi ng mga troso at rolyo ng malalaking tisyu
Mga kahoy at tabla,
Sa kulimlim ng mahinang tunog ng radyo
At mga boses na sumisirena sa distansya.

May pugad ng ibon natagpuan ang aking ama
Sa loob ng lata ng SkyFlakes,
Nakatago sa istante
Ng isang mahabang bangkong’
gawa sa mga pakong
galing sa isang timbang lumang pako at
mga napulot na tuyong kahoy
na naluto sa init ng araw.

May trabahong natagpuan ang aking ama
Sa pagitan ng mga madudumi at makulay na
goma, WD-40,
Lata ng gasolina,
Kuwerdas ng kuryente
‘Kabong, indayog at pantig;
Static at erratic;
Ang hinaing,
Mula sa lumang balde,
Kaing ng mga bote,
Plastik na pitsel,
At mga natutuyong damit
Sa huni ng bentilador.

.......

Nasabi sakin ng aking ina
Na nag-iiba ang ihip ng hangin
Na ang linya ng ibon ay sinauna
Na ang linya ng ibon ay likas na matalino
Na ang linya ng ibon ay isang mensahe
Na ang linya ng ibon ay ang dyos
Na ang linya ng ibon ay banal
Na ang linya ng ibon ay si Lola Mama
Na ang linya ng ibon ay si Lolo Papa
Na ang linya ng ibon ay isang panaginip.

Paano kung mabago natin
ang linya para maging parisukat
ang linya para maging bilog
ang linya para maging sulat
ang linya para lumipas
ang linya para maging silong
ang linya para maging langit
ang linya para maging laro
ang linya para maging kahon
ang linya para maging pugad?

Paano kung kaya nating baguhin?

-Tagalog translation by Lian Ladia

WHAT IF WE COULD RECONFIGURE A SQUARE (2023) is a site-specific mixed-media installation made for Chinatown Media & Arts Collaborative’s inaugural exhibition Learning to Land: A Story of Crossing Paths and Intergenerational Histories. The work is an immersive installation that appears to the viewer as an architectural-sized overturned milk crate made of wood, but from the rear, the crate reveals itself as a room with a video overhead and framed drawings on the walls. 

The work uses family-autobiographical storytelling of acts of reconfiguration– which include examples of physical adaptive reuse, psychically reframing, or a combination of both– as a metaphor for the Asian and Pacific Islander-American community’s own sovereignty of reconfiguration that has long-been a tool of autonomy, cultural will, celebration and survival in both San Francisco and broader diasporic communities. Whether by expanding the capacity of a material beyond its intended commercial use, or creating loopholes in the face of racist American immigration policies, or temporarily altering the infrastructure of a public square to include various types of makeshift seating for groups playing/watching strategy games, the San Francisco community– particularly surrounding Portsmouth Square in Chinatown– is no stranger to sovereignty of reconfiguration.

It is my aspiration to create a kind of visual poetics that would display the many complexities of an economy of shifting including honoring ingenuity, especially that of our elders, but also critiquing the larger systems that create scarcity, xenophobia, and the upholding of colonizer narratives in San Francisco that include market-driven relationships to land, capitalist individualism, and a white western eurocentric worldview.

WHAT IF WE COULD RECONFIGURE A SQUARE monumentalizes the humble milk crate as the principal appearance of the sovereignty of reconfiguration in nearby Portsmouth Square. On any given day many elders gather in the square around temporary tables made of cardboard to play card or strategy games, sitting on flipped milk crates and small foldable stools since the built-in benches don’t allow for face-to-face sitting. In this context, mobile milk crates are the common-person’s everyday, transitory, self-chosen, self-provided, self-determined infrastructure of the park. By highlighting as art the very tool local community elders use to assert their own sovereignty of space, the artwork celebrates their permanence. By contrast the work shifts attention away from the problematics of Portsmouth Square’s permanent architecture: Stone and metal historical markers only deal with historical white achievements, and static bench positions only promote linear, individual, and western modes of leisure/gaze.

The work includes poetic text to further illustrate notions of sovereignty of reconfiguration with family story-telling, my personal reflections and musings on Filipinx/American knowledge systems and histories that magnetically drew me to Portsmouth Square due to its proximity to the rebuilt International Hotel. Projected overhead in the room, is a video consisting of tightly-cropped jump cuts showing the movement of birds against the sky over San Francisco’s Chinatown, North Beach, Portsmouth Square, Russian Hill, and the Financial District. On the walls of the room hang framed drawings of the historic “NO PARKING” traffic sign that once existed outside Chinatown Media & Arts Collaborative when it was Shing Chong store run by the Louie Family. The family used their business’ credibility to vouch for their business partners passing through racist immigration border laws. Reconfigured into quadrants and remixed in composition, the artwork extends the “NO PARKING” sign’s aesthetic capacity to alter its initial meaning as a prohibitive sign, but also to reconsider its logical meaning as a means of creating an open and safe space for welcomed guests of the store. The artwork’s metaphor celebrates the Louie family’s immovable and unquestionable place in AAPI history as a place of community— securing safe return for scores of business partners and their families who traveled to China during the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

My many thanks go to curator Candace Huey and the team at CMAC for hosting me and my work in this space. I also thank Charlene Tan, Owen Takabayashi, Raisa Solis, Natasha Loewy, Lian Ladia, and Lindsay Rio for helping me realize this project.