"Kerel” takes its inspiration from the German avant-garde filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Querelle, which is a film adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel Querelle de Brest. Cuyson’s “Kerel” puts at its center the narrative of the sea and weaves the tale of a Filipino sailor at work on a ship. Using performance and film, drawing and painting, sculpture and set design, Jon Cuyson shuttles between desire and conflict with dream and reality to anchor the fluctuating waves of the undefined narrative while pinpointing what is at stake in the dismantling of the self. The exhibit reflects on notions of identity, authorship, originality, and authenticity.
For Cuyson, art making is an inclusionary space that can both question and acknowledge the historical and logical conditions of its existence in the context of the present. Thus, his works emphasize a concern for a site in flux, vulnerable and malleable where change is not only possible but also continuously taking place.
In 2010, Jon Cuyson formed the Department of Everyday Productions as a fictional platform intended for the generation of artistic activities in mind of our multivalent reality. The Department of Everyday Productions or DEPT. is a conceptual framework for the research and development of potential productions, much like a cinematic production company. It aims to investigate and mobilize aspects of different processes derived from the myriad of collaborative activities in film production. Hence, his works reflect on itinerant perspectives wherein a mutation of narratives and mediums occur in order to open new ways of recognizing and navigating possibilities, not exclusively but rather inclusively.
Cuyson’s multifaceted activities aspire to open new perspectives in seeing, acting and re-thinking contemporary insecurities about the built environment and our relationship to the everyday.
