How to Survive Life and Its Disasters

This conversation draws from artist’s materials that survived a fire in Summer 2020 at Green Papaya Art Projects, the longest running artist-run space in Quezon City, Philippines. Under lockdown and midway through a major archiving project, the fire took a drastic toll on the activities of the group, which has been active in the community for over 20 years. In the spirit of sharing knowledge and appreciation for the care and safeguarding of independent archives, the Recollective team, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, connected through shared community and resources to support the digitization of the Green Papaya tapes, to help preserve and bring the small collection of archival materials that survived the fire to old and new communities.

The Green Papaya Art Projects archive holds works by decades of artists who have been connected to Green Papaya. This talk highlighted elements of the video tape collection, showed excerpts of performance tapes by two artists: Donna Miranda, a co-founder of Green Papaya Art Projects, and Lena Cobangbang, an artist, community organizer, documentarian, and conduit of community knowledge. Cobangbang and Miranda, both based in the Philippines, were joined by artist Lesley-Anne Cao, representing the Green Papaya Art Projects archive, and Allison Collins, representing Recollective as the organizer of the event.