Projections #11: Kalampag Tracking Agency

As part of our Projections series, on 21 May 2023 the Art Gallery of New South Wales presented an afternoon of historic and contemporary films from the Philippines and its diaspora, guest curated by Merv Espina, co-founder of the Kalampag Tracking Agency.

The Kalampag Tracking Agency is an ongoing curatorial initiative and screening series exploring the uncharted topographies of Filipinx alternative and experimental moving image practice. Many of the works exist only as memories, rumours, and text on forgotten catalogues.

This iteration of Kalampag was specially curated for Art Gallery Cinema and included newly-digitised material from the collection of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Special thanks to Tara Marynowsky (NFSA curator) for facilitating this digitisation project.

The screening was introduced by guest producer June Miskell.

About the artists

Merv Espina’s artistic practice investigates the networks and organisms that have grown through the fissures of systemic biases and historical lapses in media, knowledge and cultural production. In 2014, he co-initiated the Kalampag Tracking Agency with Shireen Seno, which eventually became an accidental archiving project of Philippine artists' moving image. Kalampag has since screened in over 40 venues across the world. Expanding on this research, Espina is now locating seminal film and videos produced through the Goethe-Institut and their partners during the late Cold War and early post-Soviet era in the Third and formerly Second Worlds.

June Miskell is a Filipinx writer and editor based on unceded Gadigal and Wangal land. She has written for a wide range of institutions, galleries, and online arts platforms; holds editorial roles with MeMO Review (Sydney) and Performance Review (Melbourne); and works as a casual academic and research assistant at the University of New South Wales School of Art & Design where she is currently undertaking her PhD.