NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

“The Talented Island of Guam” by Michael Lujan Bevacqua July 31, 2014 The Marianas Variety If you didn’t get a chance to watch “Talent Town,” the latest film from the filmmaking duo The Muña Brothers this past month, you really missed out. The film was an engaging and exciting take on the state of art and creativity in Guam today and a call for both artists and their audience here to take things to the next level in terms of representing Guam. Full disclosure, I am one of the people featured in the film and so I do have some positive bias towards it. The Muña Brothers are known for their work on “Shiro’s Head,” which is considered to be the first Chamorro/ Guam-movie. Other movies were filmed on Guam before “Shiro’s Head,” but this was the first one that took the island’s identity, especially its Chamorro heritage seriously. Whereas other films such as “Noon Sunday” and “Kaiju-ta no Kessen Gojira no Musuko” just used Guam as just a backdrop and bas

I am applying later this month for a grant to go to South Korea and conduct research on Starcraft 2 and issues of race and ethnicity in this international esport. Starcraft 2 like Starcraft: Brood War is something played around the world, by people of every ethnicity, and as a result there become competitions and narratives that are nationalist in scope and also racial. For example, there is a strong discourse in the sports world, that those who are black, have a natural ability to perform better in sports. Similarly, in the world of Starcraft it is South Koreans who seem to have an uncanny ability to play the game at much higher levels than everyone else. I have always found it interesting what the political effects are of such narratives of innate dominance. In the case of African Americans, their physical prowess is something that was once used to justify their enslavement (since to so many Europeans it seemed that God had created them for slavery), but then later used to justify

"Bending the Arc of History" Michael Lujan Bevacqua July 6, 2011 The Marianas Variety In his speeches President Obama likes to quote Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that the arc of history, or the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. He used this in his Nobel Prize speech last year, to talk about how things may work slowly sometimes and it can be frustrating, but ultimately they do get better. Like so much about Obama, he uses this quote because of how it is inspiring, comforting and yet also conservative. A key part of his road to the White House was the way he captured in his "Yes We Can" speech,” a brief history of how different people at different points in American history refused to accept the status quote and had risen up to force the country to change. Obama is the current spiritual/political figurehead of the US (which is one of the reasons why the birther movement has emerged), and that means that his rhetori

My art show at I.P. Coffee is still up for those who are interested in seeing my latest pieces. Email me at mlbasquiat@hotmail.com if you have any questions. The week before last I typed up an artist statement basically explaining to those who were interested, where the notion for the show and its title "Before the Storm, After the Fire" came from. In explaining myself, I ended up using the old Quantum Physics paradox/experiment famously known as "Schrodinger's Cat." Except my version, as you'll read in the first paragraph, is localized to become "Schrodinger's Karabao." I would have given this a completely different name, like "Tun Sakati's Karabao," but since most people already have no idea what this means, I decided not to make it even more obscure. ******************************* BEFORE THE STORM, AFTER THE FIRE Michael Lujan Bevacqua - Artist’s Statement Put fabot, imahina na guaha un kuåto, ya gaige gi este na kuåto,