Notes On The Ebb

Finding comfort in the in-between

This article is a part of CHECK-IN 2025, our annual publication. For more information about the physical edition and how to order a copy, click here.

My Own Words is a monthly series which features personal essays by practitioners in the Southeast Asian art community. They deliberate on their locality's present circumstances, articulating observations and challenges in their respective roles.

Gary-Ross Pastrana, Rewilding, 2018, three-channel HD video, 8:40, installation view in The Extra, Extra Ordinary, Museum of Contemporary Art & Design, Philippines. Image courtesy of the artist and MCAD.

It always takes longer than expected. Getting back into the thick of things. I’ve learned that I need to ease into it, especially after a long spell with the knobs turned down. Sensitivity: that tendency to spiral into meaning, to get lost in thought. I dial it low, deliberately, to stay functional. To be with others. To prepare meals on time, help with homework, and be present.

There’s a certain calibration required to thrive in this world. Especially when that world involves people you hold dear, the kind you’d rather not confuse with your strange musings, or encumber with how you want things to be. I let my guard down and allow myself to get lost in their world of crumpets, Vocaloid music, and tales of stateside serial killers.

This doesn’t mean I’ve walked away from my instincts. There are just stretches when I’ve placed them somewhere quieter. I’ve tried not to let them demand too much space. Made sure not to filter every choice through a fine sieve. I’m aware it’s not pleasant to live with a critic, a snob, or a brooding genius. Haha.

Sometimes I joke that it’s like in those films where a retired hitman has walked away from a life of killing, now living in a quiet town with a young family, working as a teacher or a clerk. But something always happens: an old enemy reappears. The family is threatened. Soon after, you see him in the backyard with a pickaxe and shovel, unearthing a cache of weapons wrapped in oilcloth, the old look returning to his eyes.

Objects in Gary’s studio, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist.

When I find myself alone for a stretch, during a residency, perhaps, or an extended break, I take it as a chance for a momentary return. The sensors go up, tentatively. I allow things to affect me again. Looking for patterns. Listening purposefully. Scoping for new leads that might get me going.

But it’s not immediate. Like a place that’s getting harder to return to. Sometimes I begin by watching certain films. I find things to reread, play erstwhile anthems. I take walks, people-watch; find ways to reconnect with that inner voice.

(The only way I could write this was to turn on airplane mode.)

I’ve caught myself justifying hours-long binges of forgettable videos and written content by calling it research. And these days, it’s happening more than I care to admit. I tell myself that since everyone’s into the same meaningful things, it’s gotten harder to find something novel or interesting to take on. Maybe if I keep looking, I’ll find some glint of a fresh idea in this pile. I realise now that it’s like panning for gold in a swamp.

Gary-Ross Pastrana, L’Autorittrato (Pulse), 2014, photograph. Image courtesy of the artist.

An idea, after all, is non-material. It has no mass, no atoms. No tangible physical presence. But thinking consumes energy. We burn more fuel working on these equally invisible problems. Electrical signals? Perhaps they can be tracked using probes stuck on your head in a lab. But what is an idea, really? An image, a prayer, an incantation? Maybe a plan, a programme, a set of gestures we intend to execute. Now I wonder if prompts, the strings of words we cast into machines, are the new spells. Words that conjure images. Images that convince the eye, and soon the mind. Igniting belief.

This belief in the projected self. The rise of those who swear by the “fake it till you make it” mantra which, taken to its extreme, turns the world into a battleground of illusions. A war of realities and personal truths. Belief is strange like that. Maybe it’s nothing more than the willingness to inhabit an illusion long enough to bring others along. A projection that gains weight through repetition. Some people are just better at making theirs stick.

Gary-Ross Pastrana, Homecoming (Yellow), 2014, HD Video, 3:00min, exhibited in Summa (2014), Vargas Museum, Philippines. Image courtesy of the artist.

A fairly recent realisation: there’s no substitute for seeing and presenting work in person. Especially the objects, the ones that don’t photograph well, that resist being flattened. There’s something about them that even I, as the maker, can’t capture or communicate in words or pictures. Some claim it has to do with materiality, texture, and maybe, gravity? An overlooked energy that only grows with proximity to their kin.

It’s a strange thing to look back and see the works one has accumulated, not intentionally, but it can’t be helped. I’ve been at it for a while. Still, it’s not a grand legacy, just a trail. Evidence of hours spent dismantling or rebuilding something. A body of effort, if not always a body of knowledge.

Most times I start without knowing where it’s going. Just armed with a hunch, an inkling, a feeling that something might go right. I tease myself that this is the closest I come to being heroic. There’s a kind of faith involved, a belief that meaning may show up eventually, and that not finding it is always a possible outcome. Sometimes the thing reveals itself. Other times, it stays obscured. You jump anyway. I get wary when I feel too sure. I find comfort in the in-between. I’ve read that defining something immediately conjures its opposite. Somehow, I believe that. Like how venom contains its own antidote.

Gary-Ross Pastrana, Coin, 2022, Silver 1 peso from the American occupation era, ground to dust and blown to gallery’s glass window, dimensions variable. Installation view in Island Time (2023) at Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, USA. Image courtesy of Jane Lombard Gallery.

Still from a video documentation of the coin being filed and ground to dust. Image courtesy of the artist.

I often find myself wanting to thank the sun. Or say something about water. Now I realise it’s not about the real sun or the sea, but the idea of them. The way they exist in dreams, in poetry. An imagined sun. Symbolic water. I like nature, but I also like staying in. I like things I can reach for. That’s why I look up to certain magicians, the ones who work with everyday things. The coin in your pocket. The cigarette atop one’s ear. I also like their absurdity and humor: wallets that burst into flame. Wine pouring out of folded newspaper. That kind of wonder in the ordinary: small, unassuming, immediate.

This article is a part of CHECK-IN 2025, our annual publication. For more information about the physical edition and how to order a copy, click here.